The Last Place To Look
by starspangledsprocket
Summary: When the Doctor contracts the deadly Chen 7 disease, it's up to Jenny to try and find a cure. But with everything and one getting in her way, will she ever be able to save her father?
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N: Hello again! To any new readers, this story is the third in a series that I've been writing, so there might be a few comments or events mentioned that you won't understand unless you have read those. Give them a read if you want but, apart from a few things, I think most of this one will be pretty self-explanatory. **_

_**To any old readers- welcome back! I've been toying with this idea for a while now and I'm actually pretty proud of the plot I've managed to plan out. It's probably the biggest and most complex thing I've written to date, so I hope you all enjoy! :D**_

It had been an ordinary day when it happened. Well, ordinary in the sense that they hadn't been chased by aliens, shot at or wandered into something they should have which, in the lives of the Doctor and Jenny, actually turned out to be really quite boring.

The Doctor had deemed that- since Jenny was still not fully recovered from their recent trip to Autonis, during which she had managed to get herself killed and henceforth brought back to life by part of the Tardis consciousness inhabiting her body, meaning she had strange visions of random points in time- he would ease her back into their chaotic lifestyle by taking her somewhere relatively normal and safe.

Fortunately, the strange visions Jenny kept seeing seemed to have stopped. Well, she had stopped waking in the middle of the night screaming, crying and tearing at her skin and hair. Whether that meant they had stopped altogether or she had just learnt to control them, however, the Doctor didn't know. She was still weak and tired at any rate and so, although it pained him greatly to do it, the Doctor preferred knowing Jenny was safe even if it did mean they couldn't go on any adventures for a little while longer.

So he had decided on a zoo. Zoos were nice, not-dangerous-in-any-way kinds of places. And, besides, the particular zoo that Jenny was currently being dragged through had just gained two new Galacta-Rhinos that the Doctor was just dying to see.

"Come on- you'll love this!" he grinned, pulling her by the hand through a gaggle of blue, humanoid school children.

"Will I _really_? Or is this just a clever ruse to stop me going on about going somewhere exciting?" 

"Both!" the Doctor cried happily in reply. "And this _is _exciting!"

"Not from where I'm standing."

"Well you obviously just don't know how to have a good time!"

Jenny couldn't help but grin as her father squealed excitedly, dropping her hand to go bounding up to an enclosure surrounded by onlookers. She had no idea where he got his energy from.

She looked down into the guide book that she was clutching in her other hand and found a page on the creatures that the Doctor seemed so excited about seeing. An image of the creature immediately caught her eye- they were huge, green and orange spotted things with six thick, chunky legs and a horn on the end of their snout that formed the shape of a hammer head protruding from their head. They really were quite amazing.

"Look at that! Jenny, come and see- they're beautiful!" she heard him cry from somewhere in the crowd currently blocking her view of seeing the real thing. They were certainly something, but beautiful definitely wasn't the word she would have used for them. "They have two hearts you know- just like us- and they-"

A strangled cry of pain from the depths of the crowd suddenly had Jenny very alert. Yells and mutterings were beginning to fill her ears and the whole crowd seemed to jostle and begin to move.

"Dad?" she yelled, racing forwards and shoving confused people out of the way to try and find him. She finally spotted him- on the floor, clutching his chest and writhing in agony. "Everybody move back- give him space!"

Jenny came to a sudden, worried halt as the Doctor held a shaking hand out to her to stop her from getting any closer. His face was slowly turning the colour of beetroot and he appeared to be having trouble breathing.

"Stay b-back!" he managed to splutter, both hands on his chest again.

"Why, what is it- what's the matter? Is it one of your hearts? Both of them?" Jenny asked, beginning to panic as her wide eyes roamed over his twitching body looking for signs of unusual cuts or symptoms that could give her a clue as to, quite frankly, what the bloody hell was going on.

"D-don't know… could be… c-contagious," he panted, looking up at her with pleading, bloodshot eyes. "Tardis."

Though thoroughly confused and frightened, Jenny knew exactly what he meant. Nodding to show she understood, she closed her eyes and reached her mind out to where she knew the Tardis was parked. A reassuring hum echoing through the part of her brain where the Tardis consciousness rested told her that help was on the way and, sure enough, seconds later the sound of wheezing pistons filled the air.

Jenny turned just in time to see people running and throwing themselves out of the way of the rapidly materialising Tardis. A light moan from behind her had her turning back towards her father; the Doctor had pulled himself to his feet, still red in the face and clutching his chest, and began staggering towards the Tardis.

"Dad, seriously, let me help. I-"

"Stay away!" the Doctor yelled most uncharacteristically, causing Jenny to shy away from him warily.

He knew. Jenny could tell he knew what was wrong but, for some reason, he was refusing to tell her what it was. That meant it was either something small that would soon pass or, more likely, it was very, very bad. Either way, she knew she wouldn't get it out of him if he didn't want her to know.

With this in mind, and suddenly very aware of just how many people had stopped to watch the incredibly strange scene play out in front of them, Jenny followed the Doctor into the Tardis. To her dismay, she found him laid, face down, by the stairs that led up to the main console.

"Jesus Christ," she muttered worriedly, turning to close the doors behind her. "Right- are you going to tell me what the hell is going on with you or am I going to have to beat it out of you?" she asked in what she hoped was an airy tone, and didn't give away the impending sense of doom and terror that was quickly filling her insides.

She heard him mutter something weakly in reply, but couldn't decipher exactly what he'd said.

"You're going to have to speak up if you don't want me near you," she told him, sweeping past and up the stairs to set the Tardis flying.

"Scan… have to be… sure…"

Jenny sent out a mental request to the Tardis asking her to start a full body scan before she even had a chance to ask why.

"Be sure of what?"

She knew the answer before the Tardis even told her the scan was complete, but she still turned to read the results- not quite able to believe what she had been told.

"It can't be…"

The Tardis gave an indignant hum in her head- _was she suggesting that the results were wrong? _

The readings on the screen depicted Jenny's worst nightmare, but she couldn't help pulling her jacket up to cover her mouth and nose anyway as she swivelled on the spot to stare, teary eyed, at her father.

"Chen 7."

The Doctor had somehow managed to contract Chen 7- the one day plague- from, according to the scan results, one of the Galacta-Rhinos. He was wasting away before her very eyes.

"I don't… how do I… what do I do?"

Jenny hadn't realised she had been holding her breath until she let a gasp escape her lips. She didn't understand; it had all happened so quickly. One minute they were having a good (albeit slightly boring) time, and the now the Doctor had less than twenty four hours to live? She wanted excitement, but not at this cost.

"You knew, didn't you? Right from the beginning? That's why you didn't want me near you- it only affects beings with a binary cardiovascular system." Jenny took a cautious step towards her father, still very much unable to wrap her head around what was happening. She could have broken down right there and then, but she was just too numb.

"Yes… had to keep… you safe…"

"So what do I do now? How do I keep _you_ safe?" she asked hurriedly, panicking at how laboured her father's breathing had suddenly become.

"Can't…"

It took all of Jenny's strength not to throw herself across her father's body and shake some sense into him, but she'd be of even less help if she caught the disease as well. The Doctor needed her to be strong and not panic for his sake, but it was very difficult- especially when she began to notice a bluish rash creeping up his neck from underneath his collar.

"There has to be a way to save you!" she cried, unable to accept the fact that she could lose him. No, that wouldn't happen- this couldn't be real. It must be a dream, or the visions were back. There was still a chance she could stop this from happening- there had to be.

Suddenly a shudder echoed through the Tardis as she unexpectedly changed course- throwing Jenny into the pilot's chair and causing the Doctor to roll over onto his back.

"Why the _hell _have you gone and changed course?" she demanded, pulling herself to her feet again. She didn't need a misbehaving Tardis on top of everything else right now.

The Tardis hummed the answer and Jenny frowned. "Why are you taking us to Leadworth? It's- oh."

Old Sexy was taking them to Amy and Rory- perhaps the only two people on Earth (besides River, but god knows if she was even actually on Earth) who would help without question. And Rory was a nurse, which could only help matters.

"Good job, Sexy," she murmured to the machine, before turning to bound back down the steps to the door again, feeling the Tardis land as she did so. "She's brought us to Amy and Rory! Don't worry- I'll be back in a second! Sexy, look after him!"

And, with that, she threw the doors open and sprinted as fast as she could up Amy and Rory's path. She thought for a split second about knocking, but that idea swiftly became void as she pushed the back door open and scrambled inside anyway.

"Amy? Rory?" she screeched, staggering through the dark laundry room and through another door into the kitchen.

The Doctor's former companions heads whipped up, alarmed, from their dinner plates and wine glasses as the panicking, dishevelled, panting girl almost fell into their kitchen in her rush to find them. Amy's glass slipped from her hand and onto the floor, where it smashed into thousands of pieces, once she realised who it was.

"Oh my god- _Jenny_?" she squealed as they both got hurriedly to their feet. "I thought you were back in Egypt?"

"What…? Oh, no." Jenny realised they were referring to where she had been before she had met up with the Doctor again after his 'death'. "I came back- I was feeling a bit nostalgic and… hang on, no, that doesn't matter! It's the Doctor- he's ill, and I don't know what-"

"Wait! The Doctor's with you? He came back for you?" Rory interjected slightly morosely.

"Look, there's no time to explain! Please, just come?" Jenny pleaded, looking from one to the other as they each glanced at their better half.

"Ok."

Jenny smiled for the briefest of moments, before turning on her heel and sprinting back outside again. "Follow me!"

She heard the Ponds thumping along behind her, but didn't stop to check where they were until she'd jumped over their already flattened flowerbed and was at the door of the Tardis. A concerned hum in her mind told her that the Doctor was getting worse.

"Come on!" she yelled at the quickly nearing figures she knew to be Amy and Rory.

They reached her quickly and, together, stepped through the doors of the Tardis. Just as Jenny had suspected (and feared), the Doctor was laid in exactly the same position as before, only now he was shivering violently as well as having had the rash spread right across his body.

"Dad? I've got them- we're going to make sure you're alright," she called from the entrance as, gasping in shock, the Ponds rushed to his side.

"What happened?" Amy demanded of Jenny, turning to face the youngest (in looks at least) in the room.

"He… He's caught something called Chen 7. It's-"

"We know what it is," said a pale Rory. "The one day plague."

Tears began rolling down Amy's face as she looked into the unfocused eyes of her Raggedy Doctor. She had wanted him to come back for them more than anything else in the whole universe, but not like this. Not when he was so close to death.

"I didn't know what to do- the Tardis brought us here. I thought, seeing how Rory's a nurse, you might be able to help. Just until I can find an expert."

"You know I'll do my best, but all I can do is try," Rory replied unsurely, resting a palm on the Doctor's forehead. "His body temperature is dropping. We need to warm him up."

"Here," Jenny offered, pulling the Doctor's green trench coat from the coat stand and, covering her mouth and nose again with her own jacket, took it over and draped it- one handed- over her father's quivering body.

"Ok," Rory sighed, running a hand down his face in order to concentrate. "I need to know what I'm dealing with, but I don't know how to use the Tardis equipment and we can't keep letting you near him, Jenny- we can't afford for you to get it as well."

"So what do we do, Rory? What do we do?" Amy sobbed, clutching the Doctor's hand in both of hers.

"I've got some stuff from work in the house. We can put him in River's room and work from there."

They both glanced at Jenny, as if to ask permission to move him, and she nodded quickly. "Do whatever you need to do to help him."

And, with that, Rory pulled the Doctor into his arms- immediately very concerned by just how light he felt- and stepped through the Tardis doors as Jenny held them open for him.

_**A/N: Yep, the Doctor's really dying. I totally went there. **_

_**R&R?**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**A/N: So here it is- the second chapter! Hope you enjoyed the last one, and enjoy this one even more :D**_

It had been over an hour since Rory locked himself and the Doctor in River's room. In that hour, Jenny- who had been forced to stay downstairs by Amy- had managed to get most of her story out over a strong cup of tea with a rather large shot of brandy in it.

"-So I started getting these weird visions and dreams of different points in time, but I think the Tardis felt sorry for me so she seems to have somehow muted that part of herself within me. I still get odd feelings when I touch certain objects or visit certain places, but I can live with that.

"It was only because dad was worried about my wellbeing that we ended up at the zoo at all. At least, that's what I thought. He was going on about Galacta-Rhinos and how beautiful they were, then he just dropped- said he'd got a psychic message from one of them but, by that point, I'm presuming it was too late for him to stop it. I panicked- I didn't know what to do- so the Tardis brought us here."

Jenny's hands shook with shock as she sipped her drink at the kitchen table where she sat, opposite Amy.

"You mustn't blame yourself though- you did your best in a bad situation," Amy told her reassuringly, reaching out to pat the hand that wasn't clutching the cup of tea.

"Maybe the Sisters of the Infinite Schism can help him."

Amy saw the terror, shock and confusion shining in the seemingly young girl's eyes and sighed. "Look, he's going to be fine. He's a fighter but, more importantly, so are we. There's not a chance I'd let him go without doing everything in my power to stop it, and I know you're the same."

"But, Amy," Jenny leant in, her eyes swimming with tears, "I don't think there's a cure. He told me I couldn't help him."

"Yeah, but that's just him being overprotective. Rule one, remember? We can't worry ourselves about it yet- we don't know how Rory's doing."

"But I am worried," Jenny replied morosely, resting her head on her arm on the table.

"Yeah, so am I…" she heard a small voice admit a few moments later.

They sat in perfect silence until a gentle click alerted them both to the fact that Rory had entered the room. Upon realising this, the women got immediately to their feet in expectation.

"How is he? Is he doing any better?" Jenny croaked after noticing just how pale the nurse was.

"He's…" Rory took a deep, shaky breath. "He's getting worse. I've never seen anything like this before- his symptoms are advancing so quickly that I doubt, even if I did find some sort of medicine strong enough to help him, it would even get into his system fast enough to do much good. I'm so sorry… I've given him some industrial strength pain relief that should ease the suffering, but there's nothing else I can do for him."

Jenny felt her knees give way but, in a pre-emptive strike, Amy steered her back into her chair.

"This has just… it's all so quick. I can't accept that… that's _it- _I just can't. There must be something- the Sisters of the Infinite Schism-"

"But that's just it- I had that idea as well, but the Doctor said they never found a cure right up to when the hospital was knocked down and the sisterhood disbanded. Not even they could help him now."

"Then what's the point in having a space-time machine if I can't even find a cure to one little disease?" Jenny yelled as tears finally began to flow down her cheeks. Quite suddenly, as if coming to a split decision when neither Amy nor Rory answered her, she got quickly back to her feet. "I need to talk to him myself."

"Woah- not so fast!" Rory cried, both he and Amy grabbing hold of the shock driven girl as she made to sweep past them. "You know you can't go near him without the risk of you catching it as well!"

"Screw the risk!" Jenny spat, trying to pull out of their grip and failing terribly.

The tiredness of her recent toils with the Tardis on top of the sudden, catastrophic shock of finding her perfectly healthy father dying with no apparent cure to speak of was beginning to drain her, and her attempts to fight back were steadily becoming weaker and weaker.

"You can't just 'screw the risk'! If nothing else, he'd want you to be safe!" Amy told her firmly, though tears were rolling freely down her cheeks as well.

"SO THAT'S IT THEN, IS IT?" Jenny finally snapped, snatching her arms from the Ponds' grips and turning her back to them in order to hide her true emotions. "AM I JUST SUPPOSED TO SIT DOWN HERE WHILST MY FATHER ROTS FROM THE INSIDES UPSTAIRS? DO I NOT EVEN GET TO SAY GOODBYE?"

She turned back to face the two pale, shocked faces to see if they had any sort of comforting response, but it seemed unlikely from their expressions that they could physically say anything at all. Amy was desperately trying to choke back tears and failing miserably, whereas Rory just looked plain sick.

Jenny couldn't take what this was doing to them any more than what it was doing to her or even the Doctor himself. She couldn't stay in this house knowing her father was dying upstairs, couldn't take Amy's crying or Rory's pained glances. It was killing her.

"Where are you going?" Rory asked, alarmed, after a few moments, and Jenny realised she was moving back towards the laundry room door and the Tardis beyond it all.

"I have roughly twenty two hours until… until the disease wins. That's twenty two hours to be back with a cure," she told them, realising what she was saying in the same moment they were. She paused by the door to look back at them. "Twenty two hours and a space-time machine at my disposal."

She span on her heel, not before spotting glimmers of hope exploding in the Ponds' eyes, and headed quickly back through the laundry room and out into the night air. She clicked her fingers as she hurried down the garden path and, as the Tardis doors swung open, she knew the perfect and probably best hope to start looking.

Entering the Tardis and closing the door firmly behind her, she took a deep breath and glanced around. She didn't care how long it would take, or what she'd have to do; Jenny, one hundred percent, would not stop searching until a cure had been found- even if that meant she had to make one herself.

_**A/N: I'm sorry if it's been a bit slow, but things really get going in the next chapter. Exciting times! :D**_

_**R&R? **_


	3. Chapter 3

_**A/N: Hello, hello, hello! How was everybody's Christmas? **_

_**Ok, so here's the next chapter. I feel as though this is the first in a number of turning points in this story, so I hope you enjoy it! **_

The otherworldly music of the materialising Tardis echoed around the snowy landscape as the little blue box faded into view. Jenny gingerly poked her head out of the door before, glancing around her, she set off hurriedly through the snow. It was strange- even though, thanks to the Tardis, she had all the time in the world, she couldn't help but feel as though it was quickly running out.

The snow was thick underfoot and soon had her shoes and trouser legs soaked, and the flurry that was falling around her only made it more difficult for her to get her bearings. Up ahead she could just about make out a grey cliff face and so, assuming that was where she was supposed to be going, she pulled her top hat low to protect her face and set off in that direction.

"State your intention."

Jenny barely heard the voice over the gushing wind and icy temperatures quickly freezing her ears, but managed to find its source pretty quickly. To her left was (what she could only hope was, at least) an Ood. She had never actually met one before, but had heard many stories- some from her father himself- about their almighty wisdom and kindness.

Quickly analysing the creature's appearance- communication ball in hand, tentacles littering the bottom half of its face and green, luminescent eyes- it seemed to fit the descriptions she'd been given in the past.

"I seek an audience with your highest power," she told the Ood quickly, very much aware of just how numb her feet were beginning to get thanks to the snow.

"What is your purpose in seeking this?" the Ood asked in its slightly slow, ever neutral way.

"I've come to ask for your help. My father- the Doctor- is fatally ill."

The Ood seemed simply to contemplate its options for a few moments whilst Jenny began to shiver with the cold.

"The day of this meeting was written many centuries ago. You do not know what you are asking-"

"-What are you talking about? Of course I know what I'm asking, and I know the consequences before you start babbling on about that as well! Just take me to your highest power!" Jenny snapped, becoming very irritable thanks to the abysmal weather and her already questionable mood.

"Very well," the Ood nodded, before setting off towards the grey cliff face. Jenny sighed with relief, before following.

They walked in silence and, upon nearing the cliff face, Jenny noticed a cave entrance which they proceeded to enter. It was a relief just to be out of the snow, even though she was now walking down a pitch black tunnel with an alien creature who she barely knew. A distant light soon began to flicker up ahead, however, and got steadily closer the further they walked, until Jenny found herself in the entrance of a huge, cavernous space with a large fire burning in the centre of the room.

"Wait here," the Ood told her, before disappearing off into the shadows.

Jenny stayed where she was, nervously moving from foot to foot whilst watching dozens of other Ood- all of which she thought looked identical, though she would never say so- going about their daily business. Hope began to blossom in her chest as she spotted a few Ood off in one corner who seemed to be developing some sort of medicine in vials and pipes. That was definitely a good sign.

"This way." The Ood- or, at least, what she assumed was the same Ood- was back, and gestured for her to follow him (her?).

Jenny fell into step behind her guide and was led straight across the room and to a door set into the rocks that made up the back wall.

"He will see you now."

"Who?" Jenny asked, genuinely intrigued.

"The Ood, Sigma," was her reply.

Nodding even though she had no idea what that meant, Jenny reached out and opened the door, before stepping through into darkness and closing it behind her again.

"The Prodigal Child has come."

The voice that echoed behind her made a shiver run up Jenny's spine. As she turned around to find its source, small torches lit up along the walls of the chamber she now realised she was in.

An Ood sat in a high backed chair- lavishly clad in thick, rich robes and with swirling patterns painted across its forehead- watching her intently. It held its communicator ball in both hands and reminded Jenny, somewhat randomly, of the headless monks and their praying stance.

"Prodigal Child? That's new- most people just call me Jenny. Or trouble. Murderer has been tossed around a couple of times as well, I do believe-"

"What is the purpose of this audience?" the Ood asked her as she stepped into the middle of the empty room.

"The Doctor- my father- is dying," Jenny stated bluntly, not in the mood to beat about the bush. "He has Chen 7. My only hope of saving him lies with the chance that you have a cure, or know where to get one."

The Ood seemed to regard her with genuine pity for a few moments before it spoke. "We do not have what you seek. There is no cure in existence."

She should really have seen it coming with all the forewarning from her father and Rory, but that didn't stop the Ood's words hitting Jenny like a tonne of bricks. Why did people keep telling her that she couldn't help him?

"So you're saying it's impossible to save him?" she asked in a small voice, not sure whether she could take the answer.

"Nothing is impossible, Child."

"What? Then what are you telling me?" she yelled, suddenly confused and very agitated. Bloody Ood with their bloody riddles! "Is it possible to save him or not?"

"Why do you feel it is your right to prevent your father's death?" Sigma asked, skipping over Jenny's questions completely.

Jenny paused for a moment, totally taken aback by the bluntness behind the Ood's words. "Are you being serious?" Snorting slightly when she got no answer, she replied incredulously with "He's the Doctor! He's the one thing keeping the universe in order- without him everything will fall into a constant state of disarray!"

She looked up, tears shining in her eyes again. "But it's more than that. He's my _dad. _He's the only family I have left in the whole universe. I can't just let him die; I love him. I _need _him, and so that makes things really very simple. There is absolutely nothing I won't do to save him. I will tear entire worlds apart and destroy whole civilisations if that's what it takes to find a cure."

A dark expression fell across her features as she realised just how true her words were. There really was nothing she wouldn't do to save the Doctor. Perhaps it was selfish, but in that moment she really couldn't care any less.

"You are prepared to become a heartless machine? The perfect soldier?"

"It's what I was created as- I'm sure I can quite easily find it within myself. Now, I know you know how to find the cure. Tell me."

"Are you certain that this is truly your wish, Child? The road you are about to embark upon will not be easy. You will be challenged in ways you could never imagine but, most importantly, you must prove that you are willing to stop at nothing in order to gain what you seek. You must prove how much you truly want this, and so that means that you cannot use the Tardis to help you-"

"-Will you just get to the point already? And why can't I use the Tardis?"

"Because this is a journey which you must take in solitude. It is a quest for you and you alone to complete."

"Ok, so where is it then?" Jenny was getting mightily impatient.

"There is no fixed destination. In order to obtain what you need, you must seek the last possible place that you would think to look and make a sacrifice-"

"-What kind of sacrifice?" Jenny butted in sharply.

"Perhaps the most poignant sacrifice you will ever have to make."

Jenny waited silently for Sigma to continue talking, before realising that he was finished.

"Hang on, that's it? That's all you're going to tell me? Alright, let me get this straight; to find the cure and save my father I have to find a nondescript place in the universe- the last place I could possibly think to look, no less- and make the most important sacrifice of my life? Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes."

"So then, by that logic, I'll have to search everywhere in the entire universe until there's only one place left- the last place I'd think to look- and that's where it'll be."

"If that's the way you would like to see it, yes."

"But things are constantly changing! It'll take forever without the Tardis!"

"And yet it is the only way. Of course, you will always have help along the way."

Jenny sighed deeply and covered her face with her hands. She had been bombarded with so much information in just the last few hours that she was honestly surprised that she could still see straight. The danger undoubtedly involved in the journey she was about to embark on was paramount, and if she was to fall along the way then not only would her father die, but nobody would ever know what had happened to her. She couldn't have Amy and Rory spending the rest of their lives being angry with her for not being back in time, but with a part of them always hoping that she would still come back anyway. And that was before she even considered the loneliness. She had spent many years before finding the Doctor again on her own, and she had hated every moment of it. She had been created as a soldier- she was meant to be part of a unit- therefore, a potential eternity spent searching for something on her own was really not at all appealing to Jenny.

But, on the other hand, what else could she do? She had been given a way- albeit a sketchy one- to find the cure and save the Doctor. How could she make such a fuss about stopping at nothing to save him and then give in at the first hurdle? She couldn't. More importantly, she wouldn't. She'd just have to deal with the consequences as they came and keep focused on the task at hand.

"Alright," she muttered finally, dragging both hands down her face to look up at Ood Sigma. "Alright, I think we both know that I have to accept this offer even though I still don't have a bloody clue what I'm actually expected to do. Where do I even start?"

"If you agree to make this journey, there are many stages that you must pass through," the Ood told her, pulling from his pocket a small, flashing device. "In order to move between each stage you must find one of these- a Teleportation Device. Each TD works only once and takes you where you most need to be. Once you enter a stage you must simply find the next TD to progress to the next. Each stage is limitless in size and so it could take an age to find the next one."

The Ood passed the device to Jenny and she glanced at it properly. It appeared simply to be a small remote control with one large, red button on it.

"Ok, so I press this button and it'll take me to where it thinks I most need to be?" Jenny asked, still trying to get her head around what was actually happening. It was all very confusing.

"Yes, but you must also take this," the Ood instructed, pulling from its robe a rectangular slip of paper. Jenny took it without question and slid it into her pocket- she'd read it later. "And remember, Child, be ever wary of time and never rely solely on sight."

Jenny frowned slightly as she added yet another riddle to the ever growing number stacking up in her head. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"All will become clear."

Sensing that there was nothing more to be said between them and sighing as a result, Jenny sent a quick mental note to the Tardis still out in the snow telling her to look after herself, and that she would return soon with the cure. She felt the old girl sending her love and wishing her luck in reply, and smiled gently to herself. With that, there was really nothing left to do.

"Thank you for your help," she thanked Sigma, even though she still doubted he had actually told her anything of any actual worth at all.

With that done, Jenny took a deep breath to calm the suddenly erratic beating of her hearts and, thumb hovering over the teleport, pressed the button and evaporated from the cave with a slight puff of smoke.

_**R&R? Cheers, chaps :)**_


	4. Chapter 4

_**A/N: Sorry it's been so long! I have my A Level exams this week, so I've been revising like crazy! Here it is, though. Hope you enjoy :)**_

Taking a deep, shocked breath as all the wind left her body due to the seemingly erratic nature by which she had just travelled, Jenny looked warily around her. She appeared to have materialised in some sort of entrance hall and, as her senses came back to her and her breathing returned to normal, she realised she was surrounded by people. They were everywhere- yelling and laughing and generally seeming to be in high spirits.

Her sight cleared properly as the correct amount of oxygen re-entered her brain, and she was able to investigate her surroundings further. Upon closer inspection, she realised she was in some form of entrance hall. People of all colours, sizes, shapes and any other possible description were entering the hall through decompression chambers to her left, which led her to believe that she must be on some form of space craft or base, before beginning to queue in long lines snaking around the hall. Then she spotted the sign. Hanging above large doors through which the lines disappeared was a large white banner on which the words "Welcome to the 96th Annual Interplanetary Science Convention" were written in a bold, red text. As she paid more attention, she noticed there were hundreds of the things hung around the room- each the same message in a different alien language.

Jenny sighed heavily. "Why, in the name of the Moxx of Balhoon, have I been sent here? What could I possibly-"

"_Good day. The time is six minutes past eleven. Could all attendees please make their way to Conference Suite B and have passes on hand at all times,"_ a soothing, female voice rang through the hall from speakers dotted around, cutting Jenny off midsentence.

She watched silently as the hordes of people in lines began to swiftly dispense through the large doors to, what she could only assume was, another room equal in size to the one in which she currently stood. She spotted large androids scanning peoples' passes as they walked through into the other room.

Ood Sigma had told her that the Teleportation Device would take her where she most needed to be, but how was she supposed to get in without a pass? She didn't particularly fancy her chances against the androids- they looked quite capable of tearing her arms off and beating her to death with them if she was being totally honest. So what was she supposed to do?

She thought back, trying to pinpoint something particular the Ood had said that might give her a clue as to what she had to do. He had said that each stage could be limitless in size, so was this place just a starting point? Was she supposed to steal one of the loaded space crafts and go cruising amongst the stars in search of the answer? A niggling feeling in the back of her head told her this wasn't the case. She felt as though she was here for a reason. For what reason, however, she didn't quite know for sure. There was always the last riddle Sigma had given her. Something about being aware of time and not relying only on sight, but that made no sense. She had all the time in the world so long as she made it back to the Ood's home world, and therefore the Tardis, with the cure. And as for the part about only relying on sight? Well, she really wasn't too sure about that one, but she assumed that Sigma had been speaking more generally when he had said that. So what could it possibly be? What was she supposed to do without a-

Wait.

Quickly, Jenny reached into her pocket and drew from it the slip of paper Ood Sigma had presented her with, mentally kicking herself for being so unbearably thick and not thinking of it before. She flipped it a couple of times, brow creasing as she realised it was blank, before, after a few moments, the paper began to flicker and splutter, before writing appeared on it:

_"Jenny Carter  
><em>_Access All Areas  
><em>_Youth Correspondent for "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow" time travel magazine."_

"Psychic paper…" Jenny muttered to herself, a huge grin spreading across her face. "He gave me psychic paper!"

Her yell earned her a few dirty looks from latecomers who were swiftly making their way across the room, but she didn't care. Physically laughing with joy for the first time in hours- probably at least partially down to excessive shock and lack of sleep- Jenny darted across the room, handed her 'pass' to the nearest android, got it back with no problems, and entered the convention.

If possible, the convention hall was even crazier than the entrance hall had been. Jenny weaved under and around the mass of people occupying the space, glancing at stalls and particularly oddly shaped life forms as she went. She never for a second, however, forgot here purpose in being there. As she walked, she clutched the TD tightly in her hand, making sure to look in every nook and cranny for a sign of the next one.

"Oi, love?"

Jenny turned and spotted a young, surprisingly normal looking (she would go so far as to say _good _looking) man staring at her through thick, stylishly dark-rimmed glasses with a flat cap perched atop his mess of almost-black hair.

"Are you talking to me?" Jenny asked, taking a curious step towards the stranger.

"You look a bit young to be wandering about a place like this by yourself. Lost your mum and dad?" the man asked in what Jenny realised to be a slight cockney accent. She didn't reply. "Well don't worry about it- I've got a load of state-of-the-art space-time machines for sale that could get you straight home," he continued once he realised she wasn't going to answer him.

For a moment Jenny was honestly tempted to take one from him and speed the whole process of saving her father up no end. But, as she thought about it properly, she realised that she wouldn't know where to go. Finding the next TD would at least bring her one step closer to finding the cure, whereas she could travel for thousands of years and across the whole universe in one of the cockney man's Tardis knock-offs and barely even scratch the surface. Besides, the Ood had been kind enough to show her the way to find the cure. She wouldn't trample on that kindness just to spare a bit of time. She was a Time Lord- time was basically the only thing she had.

"Sorry, not today," she told him with a regretful smile.

"You sure? I made them myself- top of the class of 2092 for astrophysics, don't you know? It's quality stuff."

"That's very impressive, but I'm not interested. Sorry," Jenny smiled again, turning to leave.

After a moment she paused and turned back to face the bespectacled stranger, a sudden thought entering her head. "But maybe there's something else you could help me with."

"Oh yeah? What's that then, sweetheart?" the man asked, looking up from fiddling with the wiring of one of his machines as Jenny approached him again. He raised an eyebrow.

"I'm looking for one of these," Jenny explained, holding the TD up into his line of sight. "You haven't happened to have seen one lying about, have you?"

"There's one in your hand," the cockney replied quickly with a chuckle. Jenny sighed heavily.

"I mean _another one- a_ second one, stupid!"

"Oh. Can't help you then," he told her, shaking his head. "Pretty sure I could make you one, though. It's like a portable transmat, right? Yeah, I could make one of those no problem- for a small fee, of course."

"It's been preprogramed to take me to a specific location. I don't think you can help with that," Jenny replied, sighing again.

"Well I could always fix that one for you if it's broken. It wouldn't damage the location coordinates- I've never heard of anyone being able to delete the history off one of the little bleeders before, anyway," the man offered.

"No, I've used this one already- each one is only good for one trip," Jenny replied sadly. "But thanks for offering."

"Seems a bit stupid to me," the man mused, causing Jenny to turn back just as she had turned to go. "Why would you buy one that only has one trip programmed in- spend a fortune on each one- instead of buying one space-time from me for limitless use? My product's much more convenient."

"Firstly, I didn't buy them," Jenny snapped, quickly tiring of the stranger distracting her from her task. "And, secondly, I'm on a sort of… quest, I suppose."

"Oh yeah?"

Jenny paused. Why had she just told him that? She realised, though she was loath to admit it, the cockney man had somehow managed to gain her trust after just a few moments of talking. He was irritating, yes, but something about him seemed trustworthy. And, under his jack-the-lad façade, she knew he was intelligent, too. Extremely intelligent. Maybe she just needed to share her plight with someone who didn't have tentacles sticking out of their face.

"Yeah," she replied softly, suddenly aware that she had been silent for longer than was socially acceptable. "My father is ill- dying. I have to find the cure to the disease he has. The Teleportation Devices have been set out for me in advance, I think, and all I have to do is find them. That's why I asked whether you'd seen one- it'd take me one step closer to saving my father."

The man's face softened considerably upon the realisation of Jenny's real reason for being there. He looked at her properly for the first time and saw just how exhausted and pale she looked, as well as thin and ill. Upon closer inspection, he also spotted a glimmer of terror grace the surface of her bloodshot eyes. She was more mature than she looked- that was hard to deny- but in that moment she was just a scared, impressively resilient, child.

"I'm sorry," he condoled softly.

"Don't be- I won't let him die."

"Not about that. I'm not sorry that he's dying- not primarily, anyway. I'm sorry that it's left to you to help him. Nobody should have that kind of responsibility over life and death while they're so young, especially the fate of a loved one."

"Nobody should have that kind of responsibility over life and death full stop, yet here I am," Jenny replied, shrugging. "And I'm really not that young, you know."

"Oh. Well, if there's anything I can do to help, just call."

Jenny smiled at that. "Thanks. Will do."

She turned to continue on her way again, but was stopped again by calls of "Wait!" and "I never got your name!" She swivelled once more to face the cockney, who was now grinning cheekily again.

"I'm Jenny. You?"

"Dorian."

"Dorian? Great name," Jenny grinned. "It was nice to meet-"

"-Attention, geeks! Can you all hear me?" came a strange, slimy voice that echoed all around the room from loudspeakers, cutting Jenny off.

In unison, the entire hall seemed to turn, confused, towards the back wall. Stood there, atop some sort of stage that appeared to have been set up and clutching a microphone in his hand, was a dishevelled, maniacal looking humanoid with blue skin under a tattered, black suit, and a single, spiked tuft of bleach-blonde hair sat atop his head. A wave of distressed muttering broke out over the crowd as the strange person grinned evilly.

"Who the bloody hell is that?" Jenny muttered, looking at Dorian who had moved to stand by her side.

"Where've you been?" he hissed in reply. "He's the most sought after criminal in this sector of the galaxy."

"Why, what did he do?"

"Killing, maiming, torturing, treason. You name it, he's done it. He enjoys hurting people- he thinks it's a game that only he can win. Thing is, nobody can catch him. And even if they do, he escapes from prison or execution or whatever other punishment within seconds. Nobody can keep their hands on him."

"Right… So, erm, what's he doing here-?"

"-Ah, you _can_ all hear me! Well, that's good. And I can see from your faces that you all know who I am, which is even better! Now, where to begin?" the criminal smirked, pacing up and down along the stage. "Ah! Well now, I think I can be bold enough to assume that you all know the sorts of games that I like to play, and where better than on a space station filled with the most important people in science today? So let's get straight to it, shall we? I've placed a bomb powerful enough to create an explosion with the diameter of five hundred thousand miles somewhere on this space station. It's due to go off in, oh…" he checked his watch casually, "twenty minutes? Now, you're all very clever people, I think you know that. If you find the bomb and are able to disable it, you will all live. If you don't, well, I won't patronise you with the answer to that. But there you are! What a conundrum, eh? Don't you think you'd better get a move on?"

With that, the humanoid grinned again, pulled a handful of what appeared to be dust from his pocket, threw it to the floor and disappeared with a bang and a puff of smoke.

There were a few moments of complete silence from the crowd, before absolute pandemonium broke out. People began to run- screaming, sobbing and swinging out blindly- in all directions, tipping tables, upturning machinery and knocking other people to the floor in the process of trying to find the bomb.

"_Good day. This time is eleven forty two, and you have eighteen minutes to live."_

"Brilliant," Jenny muttered sarcastically, before taking off into the crowd.

_**A/N: Oh dear. Nothing seems to be going right for poor Jenny, does it? **_

_**I'm afraid to say there probably won't be another chapter for probably a couple of weeks now, thanks to my exams, but don't worry! As soon as they're over I'll be back to writing :)**_

_**R&R? Ta :)**_


	5. Chapter 5

_**A/N: Hello! Sorry it's been quite a while, but I've had exams and stuff so… yeah, that's my excuse :') But I'm back now! And here's the chapter to prove it- enjoy :)**_

Jenny pushed her way through the waves of panicking people, her sight set on the microphone dropped by the criminal upon disappearing. If she could just get to it, maybe she could restore order long enough to clear everyone out so she could find the next Teleportation Device.

She finally arrived at the edge of the stage with a bloody nose and blackening eye from numerous elbows to the head. That was the problem with being so small- you became just the right height to receive multiple blows to the face from averagely sized people.

Without stopping to think, she pulled herself onto the stage and snatched the microphone up in, what felt like, one fluid motion.

"STOP!" she screeched as loudly as she could, her voice seeming to bounce around the room repeatedly. Every single person in the room paused to stare at her. "Look, I know the vast majority of people are just visiting, but we're supposed to be representing science for God's sake! We're supposed to be the _sane _ones!"

People seemed to be paying attention to her. She couldn't see a single pair of eyes that weren't trained on her. Well, except her own.

"Alright, this really isn't the time for us to all start panicking. We can still pull this out of the bag, but we have to work together. So, first thing's first… we're at a science convention- does anyone have a bomb detector?" She was met by absolute silence. "…Ok, wild stab in the dark- didn't really expect that to work… Think, Jenny, think!"

She smacked herself on the head with the microphone, momentarily forgetting that she was in a room with more than three thousand people. And then a thought hit her. No, it was more than a thought- not quite yet a full plan, but definitely something in between.

"Ok, I've got a sort of half plan thing going on, so just bear with me. Dorian-" She saw him look up from the crowd. "-you have space-time machine things, right? How many people could you fit in one at once?"

"A dozen at a time, maybe?" he called back, a few heads turning his way.

"Alright, so we get all the women and children out first. There are what, twenty machines? You're all going to have to wait your turn to use one- no other mode of transport will get you five hundred thousand miles away in less than…" She checked her watch, "…fifteen minutes. After that, anyone else who wants to go can go. If any of you would like to stay and help me find the bomb, come and join me on stage, please. Alright- let's go!"

Nothing happened for a moment, but then, simultaneously, people swept over to Dorian and his machines. Many people passed small children- crowd surf style- to the front of the congregation that was quickly forming.

At the other side of the room, a small band of people began pulling themselves onto the stage. Jenny shook hands with an older man sporting a Santa-esque white beard called Jeff, a young, athletic businessman by the name of Nicholas, a middle aged woman named Angie and twin, humanoid young women with red skin, webbed phalanges and bleach-blonde hair christened Flaa and Shaa.

"Right, yes, hello everyone, thanks," Jenny rambled, finally getting round to wiping the blood from her aching nose. "So, erm…"

"You don't actually have a clue what you're doing, do you?" Angie asked sceptically.

"I-"

"-Of course she doesn't- she's just a kid!" Nicholas scoffed in reply.

"Er, if you'll just-"

"-Leave her alone, you bully!" Jeff scolded the other man. "She's managed to organise more than you have so far!"

"QUIET!" Jenny yelled, a throbbing sensation quickly beginning to build behind her eyes from the sheer level of noise and stress swirling around her.

She had to think. Realistically, it was unlikely that- even with six of them searching- they'd be able to locate a bomb in less than fifteen minutes on a space station as large as the one they were on. And that was before she even began to think about the amount of people on board. Even with twenty time-space machines in use, it'd be impossible to get over three thousand people out of the blast range in time to save them all. Would it be better to simply search for the TD and leave everyone else to fend for themselves?

Jenny looked up and watched the people around her for a moment, sighing at how disorganised things were already starting to become without someone's- namely her- supervision. No matter how far along civilisation progressed in terms of technology, the people would always act like infants. They just couldn't help themselves- the basic urge to survive that ran through every living being in existence seemed, most of the time, to directly correlate with stupidity and ineptitude. Most people just weren't built to cope under pressure. It seemed almost cruel to just leave them when she knew their chances of survival were much lower without her.

"Alright, listen up," she finally commanded, turning back to the small band of people gathered around her. "Look, I shouldn't even be here, so this is the last thing I need. Now, I'm searching for something vitally important- and I owe none of you anything- so here's the deal. I'm cleverer than any and most probably all of you put together- I know I am; it's in my DNA- so you stand the best chance if you all just shut up and do as I say. But be warned- if I find the object I'm searching for before I find the bomb, I'll be leaving you all to it. This is nothing to do with me and, quite frankly, I'm only in the mood to be saving one person today."

Even she was surprised at how harsh her words sounded in her mouth, but saw by the expressions painted on the other's faces that they all knew she meant business.

"Alright, so what do you suggest we do?" Nicholas asked quickly.

Jenny glanced around again, before her eyes came to rest on a helpful map pinned to a nearby wall. She hopped quickly off the stage and ran to it, before tearing it mercilessly from the wall and re-joining her group.

"Ok, I think the best shot we have is if we split up. I doubt it'll have been planted in here- it's too obvious, and someone could have accidentally set it off before now- so that leaves two other halls and all the behind-the-scenes stuff. So here's what we do. Flaa, Shaa, you guys take a hall each and search there, ok?"

The two women nodded, before answering simultaneously, "We understand."

They disappeared off towards their assigned areas as Jenny turned back to the others.

"Nicholas- you should take the entrance hall and decompression chambers, Angie should take the vehicle loading bays and Jeff can do staff quarters. I'll find the flight deck and search there." She pointed to each point on the map, before looking up. "We've got about ten minutes. It'll be a miracle if we can pull this off, but I've faced worse odds before and come out ok. Does everyone understand where they're supposed to be going?" The people around her nodded solemnly. "Ok, let's go then."

_**A/N: I know it's shorter than usual, but… yeah. [Insert exam excuse here]. I promise, in the next chapter, something exciting will happen :)**_

_**R&R? :)**_


	6. Chapter 6

It didn't take Jenny any more than a minute and a half to find where she needed to be going. As her group re-entered the entrance hall and separated off to each find their designated areas of search, Jenny and Jeff quickly approached a door at the far end of the room marked 'personnel only.' Jenny offered a quick prayer of thanks up to anyone who might be listening that said door was unlocked, and so the two of them stepped through without a fuss.

They were faced with a long, drab corridor on the other side. Doors lined each wall, and a wide staircase sat at the end of it; Jenny could just about make out the words 'flight deck' printed on the wall beside it.

"Ok Jeff, you get searching the rooms down here and I'll head on up the stairs," Jenny told him unnecessarily, but the current state of silence was beginning to make her nervous. "Call me if you find anything."

"Will do," Jeff replied as Jenny ran off down the corridor.

She had a strange urge to go against her original plan and tear open the nearest door to her in order to find the next TD, but her mind drifted back to the hundreds of people that would still be anxiously waiting for their ticket to safety, and so, gritting her teeth and cursing her conscience, she forced herself up the stairs to continue with her plan.

The stairs opened out into one of the most sophisticated flight decks she had ever seen. It reminded her, vaguely, of the one she had seen in an episode of Star Trek that Tom had forced her to watch all those years ago.

Everything was white and bright and gleaming, and through a large, panelled window at the front she could see the stars. She allowed herself a moment to take in the still breath-taking - even after over four hundred years of travelling- beauty of the universe, very aware that this could be the last time she ever saw it. Then, with that thought fuelling her, she launched forwards and began ripping everything apart.

She upturned chairs and dived under desks, ripped open control panels and rifled through wires, but there was no sign of either the TD _or _the bomb. Neither was there.

Jenny straightened up, ready to go back down and help Jeff with his larger work load, when a familiar voice came over the speaker system.

"_Good day. The time is 11:55, and you have five minutes to live."_

Jenny growled in frustration, wishing she knew where that voice was coming from so she could shut it off. Listening to somebody calmly telling you how long you had to live was not what she needed on top of everything else.

And then she froze. A thought popped into her head that literally left her unable to quite believe her own idiocy. The answer had been staring her in the face- or, rather, the _ears_- the whole time!

"_Never rely solely on sight, and be ever weary of time."_

Ood Sigma's words rattled around in her brain as she found herself sprinting back down the stairs again.

"Jeff? Jeff!" she screamed as she reached the bottom of the stairs, and a few seconds later the elderly man appeared from one of the many doors.

"What?" he cried, suddenly panicked by the crazed girl hurtling towards him.

"That voice- where does it originate?" she screeched, skidding to a stop on the grilled metal floor beside him.

"Well, I suppose it would be security. Why-?"

But Jenny didn't have the time to answer him. Spinning on her heel, she spotted a door marked 'security' a few strides away- obviously yet to be checked by Jeff. She threw herself towards it- unsure whether she would find the bomb or TD inside, and honestly not caring- and threw the door open.

"Oh dear God…"

The sight that met her sent a wave of dread through her body. In the centre of the room, away from the CCTV monitor screens and microphones along the back wall, was the largest amount of explosives she had ever laid her eyes on. And, just for good measure, she spotted the TD perched on top of it, perfectly wired in. The maniac who had done this wasn't just planning on blowing up the base- he planned to use the TD to tear a hole in the fabric of reality and destroy everything that ever was, is and ever could be.

And she had less than five minutes to stop it.

"By the love of all that's holy," she heard Jeff gasp from the doorway behind her as she surged forwards.

Luckily, Jenny had always been able to cope under pressure- most probably a quality she had inherited from the Doctor's DNA- and so was able to locate a small control panel perched atop the explosives relatively quickly. She didn't, however, know what to do with it once she had.

"Please tell me you know what you're doing?" Jeff's voice came from the doorway again.

"Do I look like I know what I'm doing?" Jenny snapped in reply, glancing at the pale man. "I don't know what your opinion is of me, but I'm usually the one setting these off- not disabling them!"

A countdown flashing on top of the control panel next to where the TD was resting told her she had three minutes to prevent the mass slaughter that was about to take place. Three minutes, and she had no clue.

"Alright," she muttered, figuring that improvising something was better than doing nothing at all. "Maybe if I opened this up…"

She ripped the top off the control panel and hundreds of brightly coloured wires spilled out. She'd seen enough action films (and documentaries, now she came to think of it) to know that cutting the wrong wire would result in their immediate death. She rummaged through the mass of wires- looking for a red one- when her hand came across something hard. She frowned and tried to grip it, but there was a loud click and she quickly withdrew her hand as a thick sheet of metal slid across the top of the panel, covering the wires again.

"What the…" Jenny paused to read the text printed on the metal door. "Oh shit."

The word said 'Deadlock'.

Jenny tried desperately to prise the panel open again, but she just ended up pulling away with bloody fingers. If the wires had been deadlocked in, she'd never open the control panel, and if she couldn't open the control panel then she couldn't stop the bomb from going off.

"_Good day. The time is 11:59, and you have one minute to live."_

"SHUT UP!" Jenny roared, ripping a shoe off to hurl at the equipment across the room. Sparks flew from it upon contact with the shoe, and the security camera footage went dead.

Jenny was beginning to panic. She had less than a minute to live and no way of saving herself, or any of the other people aboard the space station. Unless…

Her blood turned icy as she realised the only way of escape. If she was quick enough, she could rip the TD out of its wire restraints and teleport away before the whole base went up. But that would mean leaving everybody else behind to die.

Conflict raged within her for what felt like an age, but, in reality, no more than ten seconds could have passed until she came to a reluctant decision. What was the point in them all dying when she could still save herself? And, by taking the TD out of the equation, at least the rest of time would be safe from the blast. She knew she was deluding herself, of course, but it was the only thing that would get her through what she was about to do.

Her mind drifted to her father for a moment; he needed her to survive. And so, with that thought, she turned to face Jeff, who was still nervously watching her.

"What're you doing?" he asked, almost pleading, as she reached out for the TD.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, before ripping the object free and slamming the button down sharply as a fireball of heat, noise and colour immediately engulfed her entire existence.

_**A/N: If you think that's angsty, wait until you read the next chapter! Jeez…**_

_**P.S Has anyone got the inside joke about the time yet? Nope? At the transition between 11 and 12, everyone dies. Fore**__**shadowing something, perhaps? ;)**_

_**R&R? Gracias :)**_


	7. Chapter 7

_**A/N: Hello again, lovelies! I'm back with another chapter!**_

_**You've all got thisdayandage to thank for this chapter, as they left a review that made me rethink the structure of this story. I like it much better now, so thanks for that! :) **_

_**It's about to get pretty angsty up in here, so be prepared…**_

The Doctor's list of symptoms and side effects had steadily grown since Jenny's departure. Rory had taken to logging each one just so he felt like he had something constructive to do.

7:05 – uncontrollable nosebleeds  
>7:21 – nosebleeds stop<br>7:22 – high temperature worsens  
>7:40 – projectile vomiting (traces of blood)<br>7:46 – vomiting stops  
>7:49 – screaming starts<p>

The most recent of the side effects had most definitely been the worst. Rory and Amy had just managed to clean and settle the Doctor down after the dreadful bout of continuous vomiting when he- quite unexpectedly and without any warning- began to scream at the top of his lungs, tearing his hair out with crazed, shaking hands in the process.

The sight of her best friend in such copious amounts of pain had, of course, set Amy off sobbing again so, feeling the pressure of the situation quickly becoming too much for him, Rory had escaped downstairs with the weak excuse of wanting to get the Doctor a glass of water.

But, approximately an hour after Jenny's departure and with Rory still loitering in the kitchen, the Doctor's screams of anguish and agony finally died down. Rory let out a sigh of relief and- picking up the glass of water he had poured, as well as a bowl of water and a cloth he thought would be ideal for trying to cool his friend down- he headed back upstairs.

The sight that met him in River's room was both moving and devastating. Amy- still covered in the Doctor's blood, vomit and sweat, as well as her own tears- was sat at the head of River's bed, cradling the Doctor to her chest like she would do a child. She had removed his shirt whilst Rory had been downstairs to try and cool the fatally ill man down, but beads of sweat still shone all over his blotchy skin.

"Hush, Doctor," she whispered soothingly as he began to softly babble incoherent nonsense- neither of them having noticed Rory's reappearance. "Everything is going to be fine. You only have to be brave for a little while longer and then Jenny will be back with a cure. She promised."

Rory hoped with every fibre of his being that Amy was right; he didn't think he'd be able to take her grief at the loss of her best friend, never mind his own. The Doctor, for all his worth, didn't even seem to realise they were both there at all anyway, and Rory knew that that fact alone was killing his wife which, in return, was killing him.

"He's stopped screaming, then?" he asked after a few more minutes of watching Amy tenderly stroking the Doctor's uncharacteristically flat, sweaty hair from the door.

Amy looked up and smiled sadly. "Yeah. He's just muttering to himself now."

"Well, maybe that's a good sign," Rory murmured, placing the bowl and glass of water on the bedside cabinet. "He does it all the time, after all."

Amy chuckled through her tears as Rory plonked himself on the end of the bed to log the latest twist in the Doctor's progression in a small book he had pulled from his pocket.

"She _is_ going to come back, isn't she?" Amy broached uncertainly after watching Rory for a few long, agonising moments.

Rory sighed heavily and kept his eyes firmly on his medical journal. "She's too stubborn to let anything stand in her way of getting back. Whether she comes back with a cure, though? That's a totally different matter, Amy, and you know it."

He wasn't being harsh- he couldn't be when his wife looked so close to breaking down anyway- but he was being realistic. Jenny knew how to fly the Tardis, so why would she have left them even this long if she'd been able to find a cure? Surely the earlier the Doctor received the antidote, the better the effect?

It broke Rory's heart to voice his fears of what they would have to do next, but they really needed some sort of plan. The Doctor's body was a miracle- they had learnt that at Lake Silencio- so they couldn't just leave it to chance.

"Amy…" he muttered gruffly, finally looking up to watch his already devastated wife. "We need to think of a plan in case… in case Jenny can't help him. In case he does-"

"-Don't say it!" Amy ordered fiercely, cutting her husband off mid-sentence. "If you say it then it becomes real, and I'm not ready to deal with that quite yet."

She turned back to the Doctor and began to rock him gently backwards and forwards in her arms to sooth him.

Rory honestly didn't know what to say. He couldn't let Amy continue to blindly believe that everything was going to be ok when the situation was so dire that it seemed impossible that anything would ever be ok again- it'd just break her even further if (most probably more a case of _when_) the Doctor did die. But, on the other hand, Rory really didn't want to be the one who broke Amelia Pond's spirit. The hope that Jenny would succeed and walk through that door any minute with a big grin on her face, the cure in her hand and an "I told you so" all at the ready was the only thing keeping her going.

For the first time in his life, Rory prayed at that. He prayed to anyone and everyone that, somehow, Jenny would make it back with nothing but good news. He prayed for every odd to be in their favour, he prayed for the Doctor, but, most of all, he prayed that he would have the strength to make Amy happy again, _should_ the Doctor die within the next twenty odd hours.

"S'all my fault," he heard a weak voice croak suddenly, and his head snapped up as he realised the Doctor had begun to make sense.

He glanced at Amy. She looked just as shocked as he felt.

"What's your fault, Doctor?" she asked softly, turning her head to look at the Doctor's blank face.

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry," the Doctor mumbled again, seemingly ignoring his friends completely in favour of staring at an empty chair in the corner of the room. "I didn't mean for you to die- any of you."

The Ponds glanced at the chair even though they knew no-one was there.

"Who's he talking to?" Amy mused, glancing back to the Doctor, who now wore a pained expression.

Rory leaned over to wave a hand in front of the Time Lord's glassy eyes, and his pupils didn't so much as even dilate, never mind acknowledge that Rory was there.

"He's hallucinating. Quickly Amy, is his temperature any worse?"

Amy obediently reached up to press a hand to the Doctor's forehead, and almost immediately recoiled upon contact. "He's on fire."

"Jesus, ok…" Rory replied, getting quickly to his feet and running a hand through his hair. "We need to cool him down. Get that blanket off him- I'll open the window."

He moved over to throw the window open- the cool, winter air drifting in immediately- whilst Amy slipped off the bed to pull the blanket from the Doctor's sweaty, rash-ridden body. At the loss of bodily contact, however, the Doctor began to whimper and toss on the mattress, fighting invisible monsters that only he seemed to be able to see.

"No! I had to do it! It was Gallifrey or the universe!" he moaned weakly, eyes snapped closed and long arms flailing everywhere.

"Rory!" Amy cried, clueless.

Rory whipped back around and was by the bed in moments, having seen how panicked his wife had suddenly become.

"Amy, go and sit with him again. There's a bowl of cool water and a cloth beside you- keeping wiping him down," he instructed, watching her silently do as he was told. "I need to get his trousers off."

"_What_?" Amy asked incredulously, looking up from cradling a still whimpering Doctor in her arms.

"He can't keep running at the temperature he is doing; we need to get as many unnecessary layers of clothing off him as we can," Rory told her as patiently as he could whilst battling with the Doctor's flailing legs. "Now you have to try and calm him down! Use the cloth."

Once again Amy did as she was told, and reached out to dip the cloth into the bowl of water, before bringing it up to the Doctor's forehead. He flinched upon contact with the cool, damp material on his flaming skin but, with Amy gently dabbing his brow and hushing him softly, his body soon relaxed enough for Rory to pull his trousers and socks off. He was now completely naked apart from a pair of Tardis blue boxer shorts, and neither of the Ponds had ever seen him look so vulnerable.

Rory sighed with relief when the Time Lord reverted back to muttering incoherently to himself, but when he looked up he realised that Amy was silently sobbing into her best friend's hair.

"Amy…?"

"We can't even begin to imagine what he's going through, can we? I thought it was just physical pain, but it's hurting him emotionally too, isn't it?" she whispered brokenly, brushing her thumbs lightly over the Doctor's closed eyelids. "And it's only going to get worse. Why hasn't Jenny come back yet?"

Rory didn't answer her at all, which was a bad sign. That meant that, not only did he not have an answer, but he didn't know how to go about finding one, either. He didn't even have a way to comfort her, and this truth made Amy sob harder- tucking the Doctor's limp head under her chin just so she could clutch onto him harder.

The couple sat in silence for a long time, both staring sadly off into space as the Doctor continued to babble softly to himself.

Eventually, Rory spoke. "Amy, you should get some rest. Go on- just a few hours while I watch him, then I'll wake you up and we'll switch."

"But-"

"No buts- you look absolutely exhausted. Now go on; go to bed."

Amy still seemed very uncertain. She was tired, yes, but she was also reluctant to leave the Doctor solely in the care of her husband. What if-

"-Amy, I promise I won't let anything happen to him while you're asleep," Rory pledged softly, as though he had been reading her mind.

"But how can you promise me that?" she asked fairly.

"Do you trust me?"

"Of course. Always and completely," Amy told him without missing a beat.

"Then go and get some rest."

So she did. Amy slipped the top half of the Doctor's body off her and allowed Rory to take her place at the head of the bed as she teetered over to the door. She glanced back only once, and saw her husband already busying himself with gently bathing the Doctor. She smiled faintly at her two boys, then left.

As the door clicked closed, Rory released the large breath he had been holding and looked down shakily at the Doctor.

"Looks like it's just you and me now, mate."

_**A/N: The original draft of this was too horrible for a T rated fic, so I reined it in a bit. It still upset me as I read it back, though :( **_

_**R&R?**_


	8. Chapter 8

_**A/N: Yayyy- the next chapter is here! Thanks for all the support from the last chapter; it means a lot :) **_

_**There's a lot of dialogue in this one- prepare yourselves.**_

_Heat. _

A burning temperature was the first thing that registered in Jenny's head as she regained consciousness. As her eyes slowly opened and a small frown spread across her face, memories of what had just happened filled her mind and she found herself suddenly on her feet- breathing heavy with panic and guilt. Why was she so _hot? _She glanced around and realised she was in a small, windowless, dank room, so why did it feel like her skin was burning?

Her eyes widened with shock when she glanced behind her and realised the back of her clothes had _actually _caught fire as she'd teleported away from the exploding space station. A surprised yelp of pain escaped her lips and she began to flail about in a growing state of panic, before flinging herself to the floor and beginning to roll around in an attempt to extinguish the flames that were quickly engulfing her whole body.

Finally, after a good few minutes of blind panic and sheer agony as she tried to pat herself out, Jenny came to a shaky stop and rolled onto her back- wide eyed, panting and thoroughly exhausted as the flames were finally doused.

She lay like this for a long time, trying to calm her breathing as her mind returned back to the space station again. Her inner soldier seemed to have momentarily taken over there; she hadn't willingly killed people- innocent people in particular- in a very long time, thanks to the Doctor. So why, the second he wasn't with her, had she reverted back into a heartless machine? Ood Sigma had told her that she'd have to be prepared to kill, but she hadn't thought he'd meant innocent civilians. And now the guilt of what her father would think of her when he found out how she had come into possession of his cure would hang over her head for the rest of this journey. Just what she needed- more guilt.

But she couldn't give up now. She was one step closer to finding the cure- those people wouldn't have died in vain if she could just get to it.

Assessing her wounds, however, Jenny realised that she was in a pretty critical way. Her back throbbed against the cold, damp floor, and the small pool of blood that was spreading out around her from beneath her abdomen told her that something must have hit her in the lower back just before she had teleported away. Whether it was a piece of shrapnel or a severed body part, however, she didn't know.

"Ok," she told herself firmly as she braced to sit up, her voice still thick with the smoke that her, now, singed clothes and skin had created whilst she was on fire. "You can do this. Just get up and don't think about it. You'll be fine- you always are…"

But, try as she might, she couldn't even force herself into a sitting position, never mind stand. And, as she put more strain on her body (to no result), her frustration levels rose, which caused a curious darkness to creep into the corners of her vision. When she finally admitted defeat and lay back, though, the darkness only got worse. There was nothing she could do to stop it- she was already so weak, and putting herself out had really taken its toll on her- so she had no choice but to let the darkness envelop her and carry her, once again, off into unconsciousness.

* * *

><p>"Where did she come from, do you reckon?"<p>

"I don't know. Maybe she was left over from the last Game?"

"Nah- her injuries are pretty bad. She can't have been here that long or she'd have died. I'm telling you- they left her here for us to find. We're supposed to use her for something."

Soft voices drew Jenny from unconsciousness again after an unknown stretch of time, and, groaning quietly as a wall of pain seemed to come down on her all at once, she opened her eyes and realised she had been moved from the dank room she had teleported in to.

"You don't think we'll have to _sacrifice _her, do you?" came a small child's voice to her right, and she managed to turn her head just enough to make out a group of people sat with their backs to her around a pit in which a fire was burning merrily.

As more of her senses returned to her, Jenny realised she had been placed in a camp bed in an otherwise very plain room. She spotted a large crate with a medical symbol on it nearby, as well as a few more camp beds dotted about and a door on the north and south walls, but, excluding all that and the people by the fire, the room was very uninteresting.

"Does it really matter if we _do _have to sacrifice her? Only one of us gets out of this alive, so why does it matter? God, you act like such a _child _sometimes!"

"Andrew, she's seven…"

"Yeah, well, if she's old enough to apply, she's old enough to know what she has to do to win!"

"Sorry, hello, but could anybody tell me what the bloody hell is going on?" Jenny called out as smoothly as she could, but found it difficult once she'd pinpointed the source of her pain to the expanse of her back, legs and shoulders. As a result, the cheery voice she was going for actually came out as more of a strangled grimace.

That aside, she didn't even have to look over at the fire to know that every pair of eyes in the room had turned to look at her. She put a hand up and helpfully waved it to prove that she was now conscious, and it had been she who had spoken.

"I'd get up and introduce myself, but I seem to be having a bit of trouble with my legs. Now, I'll repeat- I was in a dark room and I passed out, so could anybody be kind enough to tell me where the bloody hell I am now and how I managed to get here?"

"We were hoping you could tell us," a young man, no older than sixteen or seventeen, with dark hair and even darker eyes piped up, getting cautiously to his feet in order to move over to Jenny. "When we found you, you were in a pretty bad way. There was blood everywhere, and your clothes and skin were burnt. We did the best we could to patch you up, but we know no more than you. Probably less."

"Alright," Jenny sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose between a finger and thumb whilst trying not to cry out in pain. "But you still haven't told me where here _is_."

"But-? Well, you're in the Game, of course!" the boy chuckled confusedly, as though the fact were common knowledge.

"What Game?"

"Jesus, did you bang your head or something before we found you? You apply and get selected, and then they beam you-"

"-Who's they?"

"I dunno; only the winner gets to see them, and they never talk about it," the boy told her, looking helplessly to the other people for help, but they'd all turned back to their individual conversations and were no longer paying either of them any attention.

"Ok. No, wait, not ok- none of this makes any sense," Jenny snapped quickly, shaking her head slightly to clear it. "Let's start from the beginning. What year is it?"

"5151, why-?"

"-I'm tired, in pain, pissed off and incredibly focused right now, so it definitely won't end well for you if you attempt to ask me another question," Jenny warned as calmly as she could, before taking a deep breath. "Right. 5151? What planet?"

"We're on Accatta Major right now, but-"

"-But you lot aren't from Accatta Major, are you? Nooo, you smell all human-y and gross… So I'm guessing you're from Earth, yes? Or your ancestors, at least?"

"Yes-"

"Alrighty, then! That brings us to this place! What is this place?" Jenny lost a bit of her gusto once she realised she actually had to listen to the young man's input, instead of just breezing through her own thoughts out loud.

"I'm surprised you don't know-"

"-Assume I'm from out of town. Now, tell me- go!"

"Well," the boy started, totally thrown by Jenny's authoritative tone and no-nonsense attitude. To him, she was just a very strange, albeit intelligent, thirteen year old. "The Game has been going on for years- it started way before I was born. It started off as a space mission- sending people out to explore the stars, as you do- and they found this planet. Something happened here to the original space crew- they found something- but only one of the original twelve came back-"

"-Do you know why? What happened to the others?"

"I wasn't alive at the time, but apparently all they could get out of the survivor was that he'd been granted his one greatest wish, and that everyone else could be too if they were willing to walk through hell and come out unscathed."

"Creepy," Jenny commented softly. "So, what? You all _came_?"

"Well, when my ancestors agreed to take part, whatever's in charge here opened up a link to Earth through a comms. system. We all place our applications, twelve people are picked and they're teleported here. Only one ever comes home, though."

"Why is that?"

"Nobody knows. Nobody who comes back talks about it. I think it's because we'll have to fight to the death. Everybody wants their wish granted more than anything else- we're all asked whether we're prepared to do anything for it before we're teleported here. I know, if I got to the end, I wouldn't let someone else go ahead and take my wish. Only one is granted per Game. I'm prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure I get what I want."

Jenny sat in a moment of quiet contemplation, trying to process everything that she had just heard. After a few moments, she spoke again. "If that's the case, then why did you save me?"

"What?"

"If you're prepared to kill everyone to have your wish granted, why didn't you leave me to bleed to death? Would have made things simpler, don't you think?" Jenny questioned breezily, an eyebrow raised.

"I told you- they only ever bring twelve people on board. Twelve of us arrived- we checked- and then you just appeared in an empty cupboard. We assumed we'd have to use you for something."

"Right; keeping me alive for your own gain? It's a start, I suppose…" Jenny sighed, running a hand through her singed, bloody hair.

"Where did you come from, anyway? We found you with this, but it doesn't work." The boy pulled the used TD from his pocket and handed it to her.

"Oh, I'm a long way from home," Jenny replied, sighing and tossing the useless hunk of metal to the ground. "I sacrificed a lot of lives to get that, and now it's worthless. Figures, really."

"We found these with you as well," the boy added after a tentative pause.

He held out the, now, singed psychic paper, as well as another, folded scrap. Jenny took them both and frowned at the latter.

"This isn't mine…" she muttered, slightly confused.

"It was taped to the back of your teleport thing. I just assumed it was yours."

But Jenny wasn't listening anymore. How could she not have noticed a slip of paper taped to the back of the TD? She had been in a hurry, she reasoned, but surely she would have felt it?

Pushing those thoughts to the back of her mind, Jenny focused on the paper again and gently unfolded it- careful in case her being on fire had weakened it. On it, in a beautiful, looping hand, was a riddle:

_Solve the puzzles,_  
><em>Fix the key,<em>  
><em>You're one step closer<em>  
><em>To finding me.<em>  
><em>The journey ahead<em>  
><em>Seems never to cease,<em>  
><em>But keep your heart clear<em>  
><em>To find inner peace.<em>  
><em>I know what you seek,<em>  
><em>But don't lose your head,<em>  
><em>As over you cross<em>  
><em>To the realms of the dead.<em>  
><em>Once there what you ask<em>  
><em>Will come with a price;<em>  
><em>An eye for an eye,<em>  
><em>Nothing else will suffice.<em>

Jenny's frown deepened as she realised that she had no idea what any of it actually meant, and her frustration levels were very quickly reaching a new high as a result.

"What does it say?" the boy asked rather timidly.

"It's nothing," Jenny replied quickly, folding the paper and placing it in her pocket along with the psychic paper- a difficult task as her legs still seemed to be refusing to work. "Alright, what the hell is wrong with my legs? Why can't I move them?"

"Well, when we found you, you had a lump of metal stuck in your back. Luckily, Laura over there is a doctor, and we have a pretty great selection of medical supplies in here, so she got it out. She put some stuff on your wound- said it'd paralyse everything from the wound down for a few hours in order to heal everything quicker."

"And, yet, she didn't think to give me anything for the pain?" Jenny asked through gritted teeth. "Please tell me this place has some pain relief?"

"Yeah, sure, sorry, you were unconscious- she must have thought the stuff would numb you as well-"

"I can't move them- doesn't mean they don't _hurt._ Just get me the drugs, kid."

As Jenny watched the boy quickly scamper over to the big medical crate and begin rummaging around, she felt guilty for being so snappy with him. He'd done nothing wrong- if anything they'd saved her life, and they hadn't had to. But the guilt of what had happened at the space-station was still fresh in her mind- the horror was still raw- and she couldn't help but think that this kid had a better chance of survival if he stayed away from her. Not that he would have any chance of survival at all- Jenny would make sure she was the last one standing in order to be granted the wish of a way to save her father. Even if these evasive creatures couldn't directly give her the cure themselves, perhaps they held the next TD or a way to get to it. She would stop at nothing to get what she needed.

Perhaps, then, what she was really doing in keeping the boy at arm's length was saving herself. She had become familiar enough with a few people on the space-station for the pain to be that much worse as she killed them. She could save herself that pain by convincing herself that the people around her had to die. If not for her, eleven of them would die anyway, so she was really just killing one of them. One person to save another- that was nothing.

Having said that, that thought wouldn't stop her from trying to find a way to spare the others, even if they didn't get what they wanted. Maybe she could even find a way for them to all get what they desired- why shouldn't they? She was prepared to kill them, but that didn't mean that she wanted to. She wasn't _that_ selfish.

One thing was certain, though. They would all have to stick together if any one of them had a chance of survival at all. Who knows what they could come up against?

"Here you are. They're the strongest I could find," the boy murmured, holding out a small pot of pills as he moved back over to Jenny's bed.

"Thank you," she replied rather stiffly, taking the pot from him, before sighing. She could try and convince herself that she was doing the right thing, but she didn't have it in her anymore to be cold to this boy. He was probably scared enough already, and her mothering side momentarily took over as, knowing she would probably come to regret it, she asked, "What's your name?"

"William. William Beven."

"Hello, William Beven," Jenny greeted, shaking his hand in one of hers whilst shovelling pain killers into her mouth with the other. "I'm Jenny."

"Hello," William replied, smiling.

"So what's your wish, then?"

"What?"

"You must have something pretty important in mind if you're prepared to kill for it," Jenny commented, placing the remaining pills in her pocket with the paper. "What do you want?"

"Oh. Well, my dad died a couple of years ago…"

"I'm sorry," Jenny murmured, noting the change in the boy's expression. "What happened?"

"He was one of the people caught up in the explosion at the Interplanetary Science Convention a few years back. Apparently he stayed to try and get other people out."

Jenny's hearts contracted painfully and she momentarily couldn't breathe as she came to a cruel realisation. "What was his name?"

"Dorian."

Darkness crept into the corners of Jenny's vision again and she realised she had stopped breathing altogether. Gasping slightly and blinking through tears- fighting against the darkness- she turned her attention back to William. She should have _known _that she'd live to regret trying to get closer to the boy.

"All of his stock was on board with him, so we lost everything. Then my mum got ill last year, so she can't work, and I've tried to get work, but nobody's hiring- especially not someone my age. There are seven of us, and I'm the oldest, so it's my job to put food on the table. My wish is for money- not loads, just enough to survive- until I can get a proper job and start earning. The little ones are so weak- they'll die if I don't do something quickly."

It was all Jenny could do not to get lost in the welcoming darkness that still lurked in the edges of her vision now. But she had to stay conscious; it was her fault that William was here, and she would have to live with that guilt. There was no backing out now.

"I'm… I'm so sorry," she managed to stutter out, taking deep breaths to calm the erratic, painful beating of her hearts.

"Don't be. These things happen sometimes. There have been people worse off than me, and there will be people who continue to be worse off than me long after I'm dead. But I have a chance to change my luck, and I've taken it," William replied, seemingly mistaking Jenny's sudden change in attitude due to the pain of her wounds, not the emotional pain tearing her apart from the inside.

It took Jenny a few, long minutes to compose herself properly, in which time the two of them sat in silence and watched the flickering of the fire across the room, listening to the gentle muttering of the other people around it.

"So, this Game then?" she finally sighed, feeling able to talk again. "Are we talking Space Invaders, or Pac Man?"

William chuckled slightly. "I don't think it'll be quite like that, I'm afraid. Nobody knows for sure, of course, because nobody talks about it, but apparently there are three tasks- one tests physical strength, another tests mental strength, and the other one tests emotional strength. This is just the first holding bay- step through the door over there and it all begins. There's one of these bays between each task so we can patch ourselves up before going on to the next one."

"Oh, so they're generous, then?" Jenny asked sarcastically, once again glancing around the drab room. "Wouldn't want us to bleed all over their precious floor; how kind of them."

"I know," William replied, smiling again.

Jenny paused, a thought coming into her head. "So, they beam you straight into this room, then?"

"Yes… why?"

"Why didn't you all get straight off into the first task, then?"

"The door's locked," William explained. "The only door we could get through was to the cupboard that you were in. We assumed it wouldn't open until you're up on your feet again."

"But why?" Jenny asked, more to herself than to William. "It's almost as though they knew that I was coming…"

"They probably did," William reasoned. "They control who gets on and off the base. You must have been granted permission to get on board?"

"Nope, just hit a button and appeared here," Jenny replied, frustrated. "I wish I knew who _they _were!"

"Well, the sooner you're back on your feet, the sooner we can go and find out…"

_**A/N: Yay, the return of the long(ish) chapter! Haven't had one this long in quite a while! I enjoyed writing this one :)**_

_**R&R?**_


	9. Chapter 9

_**A/N: I am so, so sorry I haven't updated in a while! I've been really ill, and have had chronic writer's block as a result :(**_

_**But I'm back now! I should tell you that I go to Rome on the 17**__**th**__**, and I'm going to try and post at least one more chapter before I go, but, if I don't, I think this is quite enough to be getting on with for a while ;) **_

_**Happy reading! :D**_

Within two hours Jenny was back on her feet again. Granted, she still moved rather stiffly due to the thick bandages coating her back, and the ever-persistent pain just refused to go away even with numerous pills circulating around her system and a slight gold sheen to her skin that told her that her body was attempting to repair itself, but she felt better for being up and about.

"Alright then guys, I really think we should come up with some sort plan!" she announced, pacing repeatedly around the fire to work the feeling back into her legs.

"Jesus, here she goes again with that bloody plan of hers! She's not been on her feet more than ten minutes and she's already doing my nut in!"

"Andrew…" William warned sharply from his place by the fire, "Shut it."

The man he was talking to had cropped, ginger hair that reminded Jenny of Amy Pond and, sadly, home, as well as pointed features and a sharp suit on. She knew it was wrong, but Jenny felt no sorrow in the fact that he might have to die for her to win the Game. She was currently just teetering on the edge of soldier mode, and so was actually having trouble caring about anything other than strategy.

"Look, we have a better chance of all surviving if we stick together. We don't have to kill each other!" she told everyone firmly, albeit through gritted teeth, as she came to a stop behind William. "Nobody knows what happens here because they refuse to talk about it! You don't know that we can't all get what we want if we just stick together and all make it to the end."

"Listen to her- spouting utter nonsense, this one. She's trying to get us to lower our guards so that she can kill us! That must be why They put her in that cupboard."

"For the last time, I teleported into there! I'm not here as an obstacle!" Jenny cried frustratedly. "Look, I was just trying to save you all from disappointment, but suit yourselves."

"What disappointment?" ginger Andrew asked cautiously, eyes narrowed.

"The disappointment in realising just as I kill you all in order to win the Game that, had you listened to me in the first place, you could have saved yourselves. But you're right- we should all act like animals and brutally slaughter each other when there might not even be a need to," Jenny spat sarcastically, trying desperately hard not to let her temper get the better of her as she glared around at the twelve doubtful faces sat before her. "Take it from someone who knows, ok? Killing is like an addiction- once you start you won't be able to stop, and trust me when I say that it's not a cycle that you want to get caught up in."

She allowed herself a moment longer to glance at the stubborn humans around her. From all she could tell, there was no correlation between them except their ability to speak (in some cases, broken) English. Apart from that, every age group, gender, nationality and all in between had been accounted for. That meant that the mysterious "They" weren't looking for a specific type of person. Not physically, at least.

"I think we should listen to her. I don't really want to kill anyone," piped up the seven year old girl who Jenny had overheard being yelled at by Andrew earlier. "Even if we can't all get our wish, it'd be nice to go back to our families, right?"

"It's quite ironic that the smartest member of your group is actually the seven year old, isn't it?" Jenny commented innocently, but was unable to keep a small smirk off her face knowing the child had successfully swayed enough opinions in her favour. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Isabelle."

"Right then, I can tell from most of your faces- minus Andrew's, but he just permanently looks like he's sucking a lemon- that you know Isabelle is right. So we stick together, yeah? Everyone play to their strengths, and don't be afraid to communicate!" Jenny instructed quickly, ignoring Andrew's furious expression. She was trying to be rational and platonic about the situation, but they really were wasting time by sitting and chatting. Well, sitting and arguing would probably be a better description. "Ok, are we all ready?"

The twelve looked suddenly panicked, and only then did Jenny remember that most- if not all- of them were just regular civilians with no former training and no clue. She sighed as they clambered shakily to their feet.

"Just in case this makes anyone feel better, I have previous military and battle experience. I'm also quite clever, if that makes a difference either. I'm going to do my absolute best to try and get every single one of you out of this- even Andrew. Just know that… sometimes, trying your hardest just isn't enough…"

She had to warn them. She wanted them to trust her enough to let her help them, but past experiences had taught her that having peoples' lives in her hands would, most definitely, end in tears. She could barely take care of herself, never mind twelve others.

And yet a part of her- the part that she tried desperately to repress, and as a result fought a daily battle with- told her that she _should _lure them into a false sense of security, then- like lambs to the slaughter- kill them all herself. Things would be so much simpler for her if people stopped getting in the way.

Jenny shook her head to clear it of such thoughts, before leading the practically bristling group over to a door stamped with a giant "1". As she approached, she heard a click as the door unlocked- seemingly by itself, though she was beginning to suspect not.

The others grouped around her as she reached the door and, taking a deep breath, she reached out and opened it wide. Darkness pooled in front of her.

"Alright. Well- so far, so good," William murmured from somewhere to her right.

Grinning slightly at his almost adorable naivety, Jenny motioned for everyone to follow her and stepped into the deathly stillness of the first room. At first there was nothing- just darkness- but, as the last person stepped over the threshold, the door swung shut of its own accord and torches along the walls suddenly illuminated everything in an orange glow. The group turned as one when the door slammed shut behind them, but knew instantly that they would no longer be able to go back that way.

"Stay close everyone," Jenny murmured, her voice carrying easily across the cavernous space.

Looking around- the others rapidly stepping over to her- Jenny saw a door in exactly the same position as the one they had just stepped through on the far wall. There was also a pile of something shiny in a silhouetted corner to her right.

"Will somebody go and check that door over there? The rest of you, stay here," she instructed, breaking away from the group to stride over and investigate the shiny mass in the corner.

"I'll do it," she heard William volunteer from somewhere behind her.

It became apparent before she had even reached the far corner what the pile was. Jenny came to a sickened stop and picked up one of the thirteen sharp, steel swords that lay, discarded there. There was one for each of them. Her first thought was that, as she had suspected, the mysterious "They" had been expecting her. If they hadn't, there would only be twelve swords. So what did that mean? It infuriated her that she honestly had no clue.

Her second thought was one of disbelief. Surely they weren't expected to just fight to the death? That wouldn't go down well with the others after she had made such a show out of trying to get them to pull together.

"Jenny? The door's locked," William called from the other side of the room, his brow furrowing as Jenny turned on the spot to face him. "What've you got there?"

Jenny looked down to the sword still clutched tightly in her hand, before taking a few steps into the light to hold it up. "It's a pile of swords. The door is locked, and the only thing in this room is a pile of swords…"

Realisation swept across the group in a wave, swiftly followed by gasps of shock and fear. It took all of Jenny's strength not to throw her sword the length of the room and slice the smug expression right off Andrew's face.

"What did I tell you all? Utter nonsense-"

Andrew's rant was cut off- much to Jenny's relief- by an earth shattering roar. Jenny froze, trying to keep calm. Where the hell had that come from?

"Jenny!" William screeched, racing over to re-join the group. "Look up!"

Jenny did as she was told, and immediately felt bile rising in her throat. On the up side, they weren't expected to fight _each other_. On the down side… there was a ginormous, octopus like creature hanging from the ceiling, a million-toothed grin barring down at them.

There seemed to be a moment where time simply froze, and the two opposing forces stopped to just stare at each other. It only took a split second, however, and the moment was over; the creature screeched again and peeled its tentacles away from the ceiling to allow itself to drop to the floor.

"Move!" Jenny roared, panicked.

She gestured for the others to move over to her and the pile of swords and, for once, they all did so without question. That didn't stop Andrew from tripping a couple of the older people as he surged away from the creature hurtling towards them, though. Jenny didn't even have time to take a step towards them and help before the creature flattened them.

Less than five minutes into the first trial, and they were already two down.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR?" Jenny screamed as the rest of the group got to her, grabbing Andrew by the lapels of his jacket and forcing him against the wall. "YOU KILLED THEM!"

"No I didn't- that thing did!" he replied, smugness still laced in his otherwise fearful voice.

For a minute Jenny totally forgot that they were in mortal danger. She was far too busy focusing on not strangling Andrew with her bare hands. Never had she met a person that made her doubt the entire of humanity before in her whole, long life. It was all she could do not to, just once, let her inner soldier take control and hang the bastard with his own tie.

"Jenny! It's coming this way!"

Reluctantly, she let Andrew down and turned quickly back towards the creature. It was, indeed, moving towards them. The only way she could describe its movement was _rippling_.

Everyone had picked up a sword by now. In some distant corner of her mind, Jenny noted how ridiculous most of them looked- especially Isabelle. The sword was almost as big as she was. It didn't help that they were all hopping from foot to foot and quaking with fear, either.

"Jenny, what do we do?" William cried. She shrugged his hand off her shoulder as he tried to turn her back to face him.

Something wasn't right. As she looked at the creature Jenny couldn't figure out what it was, and that infuriated her further. She was missing something, something big…

She heard William yell something about spreading out around the edges of the room, but she wasn't listening. The others did as they were told, but she stayed in her corner, staring at the creature as it paused, unsure where to go now everyone was scattering around it.

And then it hit her. She scanned every inch of the creature again, but she was definitely right. The creature had no eyes… so how did it see?

It didn't.

"Everybody, freeze!" she yelled, head snapping up. Temporary relief flooded through her when she saw everyone else skid to a stop to turn and look at her. "Look at it- it doesn't have any eyes! It can't see you!"

"Then how does it know where we are?" someone to her left yelled.

"Look at the tentacles- look at the things on the ends! I thought they were suction cups, but they're not. They're like amplifiers! It can sense the vibrations you make when you move- you all have to stay still!"

"Oh, and then what?" Andrew snarled from across the room. "Sit here and wait for it to die of old age? What're the chances of us dropping first?"

There was a split second in which Jenny thought about the probability of being able to hurl her sword hard enough to go straight through the creature and penetrate deep into Andrew's chest, but she immediately categorised it as impossible. It was unlikely that it would even kill the creature; it was just too large, which was a shame.

"No, we don't have to wait for it to die of old age!" she snapped in reply. "It'll just give us a chance to strategize!"

The creature in question was now sat placidly in the middle of the room, occasionally waving a tentacle around in the air. Watching it like this, it didn't seem dangerous at all.

"To do what?" Andrew yelled. "Even if we kill it, the door's locked!"

He had her there. Jenny was sure that the swords were there so that they could kill the creature, but then what? They could kill it, but they'd still end up dying of old age unless they found a key to open the door. Damn.

"No, look!" Isabelle cried from across the room, pointing towards the creature. "What's that around its neck?"

Jenny couldn't crane her neck far enough to spot what the seven year old was pointing at, but the grins that spread across the faces of those around her told her that the girl was onto something.

"What is it?" she called, still trying to pivot her body enough to see without moving too much and alerting the creature to her presence.

"I can't be sure, but it looks a lot like a weird sort of key," William smiled. "It looks like it'd fit the lock in the door, anyway."

"So we get the key?" the woman Jenny remembered being called Laura asked from next to her. "But, how? If we move, the creature knows where we are!"

Jenny quickly scanned the room again, taking in the position of each member of the group. Now there was a goal in sight, she could quite easily knock a plan together that would give them the best chance of survival. It wouldn't be fool proof, but she doubted that anyone here was a fool. At least, she really hoped not.

"Ok… if the creature's only way of sensing where we are is through its tentacles, then all we have to do is cut off that supply of information and that should leave it pretty useless," Jenny thought aloud, still scanning the room quickly for any scraps of information she might have missed. "So here's what we do. There are only eight tentacles and eleven of us. So you lot-" she pointed to eight people around her, Laura and Andrew included, "-take a tentacle each. It won't be that difficult- with any luck, as soon as we move it'll rear up and be in the perfect position for you to slice right through with one stroke. So that leaves William, Isabelle and I. Now, I-"

"-Hang on, sorry, but who put you in charge?" Andrew spat from across the room.

_Don't rise to the bait_, Jenny thought to herself. _If you're lucky, the creature will take care of him so you don't have to, anyway. _

"Have any of you got a better idea?" she asked aloud, looking around again. Nobody said anything. "Ok then, we go with my idea. Now, as I was saying… Isabelle, sweetheart, I know you're scared, but you're the smallest one here, so I need you to get the key. While I distract it I need you, William, to get her past all the dismembered tentacles and such, and lift her up so she can grab the key."

"But how are you going to distract it?" William asked, concern evident on his face and in his voice.

"I don't know, but I'll think of something…" Jenny replied vaguely.

She knew exactly what she was going to do; she just didn't want to worry any of them. There was about a fifty/fifty chance of her getting out of this alive and, where she had always tried to be optimistic (often very badly), she predicted the others would just panic further. She also feared above all else- even the thought of not finding the cure- that, if she did get killed, Andrew would allow everyone to turn on each other and the whole thing would turn into a blood bath.

"Alright, does everybody know what they're doing?" she asked quickly, tightening her grip on her sword. She glanced around and watched everybody do the same. "It'll confuse it if we're all moving at once, so keep on your toes… Ok, after three. One… two… three!"

She was vaguely aware of everyone surging forwards around her and a sudden screech from the creature as it whipped around, but she quickly blocked it all out and focused on her goal. Her legs began moving and she realised she was moving forwards, sword raised in front of her and screaming like a warrior, and then she was airborne. A dismembered tentacle whipped past her as she sprang into the air but, again, she ignored it. Her efforts were focused completely on the gaping hole that was the creature's mouth and, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes tightly, she dived- sword and then head first- straight down the beast's throat.

_**A/N: MWA HA HA. **_

_**If I don't get another chapter finished before I go to Rome, I'd love to hear how (or if) you think she'll get out of this one ;) **_

_**R&R? 3**_


	10. Chapter 10

_**A/N: I was going to make this chapter longer, but I wanted to get something up before I go to Rome and I don't think I'll be able to do that if I kept writing, so this will have to do until I get back :)**_

_**In other news, a lot of you have been asking when we'll be checking back in with the Doctor again, and I've said that I'll do a Doctor chapter between each section of the story (ie. every time Jenny finds a TD), but this section is taking a lot longer than I thought and so the next chapter will be a Doctor/Pond chapter :)**_

A moment of complete silence swept across the room as the group and creature alike stopped to watch Jenny be swallowed alive- sword and all. Then panic began to set in.

"Jenny?" William screeched, Isabelle teetering on his shoulders in an attempt to grab the key tied around the back of the monster like a backwards collar.

He got no reply and, what was worse, people were starting to drop like flies as the sense of panic at losing their brightest team member quickly escalated, resulting in mad swinging and hacking at anything they could find. It all just seemed to make the already furious creature even angrier.

"William? William, I've got it!" Isabelle yelled triumphantly, holding the key aloft in her small hand.

"Brilliant, let's go-"

But in all the confusion and hysteria, William was suddenly cut off when he thought he heard something humming from inside the creature. Curious, and suddenly forgetting any and all danger, he dropped Isabelle to her feet and took a step closer.

There the humming was again! Only, this time… it sounded like a-

The creature gave a sudden, strangled cry of agony as, screaming and covered in innards, Jenny burst through its skin- her sword jutting out in front of her, cutting a path out of its stomach for herself. She fell to the floor- panting and dry-heaving- as, with a rippling shudder, the creature keeled over backwards and breathed no more.

There was another age of silence in which everyone still alive stood, mouth agape, at the sudden turn of events. William was the first to find his senses and so, shaking his head rapidly to clear it, he raced to Jenny's side and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Are you alright?" he asked timidly, too afraid to turn her onto her back to get a better look at her in case she was badly hurt.

There was a short pause in which she caught her breath, before Jenny replied, rather sarcastically, "I've just been swallowed by a carnivorous octopus. I was literally being molested by bits of decomposing bodies as I slid down its throat. Would _you _be alright?"

"Are you hurt, then?" William rephrased with a sigh.

"Physically? No. Emotionally? I'll definitely be needing therapy when this is all over. It was one hell of a distraction, though."

William sighed again- with relief this time- before offering Jenny a hand in order to help her up. She took it and, with shaking legs, straightened up to look around.

"Is this everyone?" she asked disbelievingly, looking around at the six people still standing. To her silent displeasure, Andrew was amongst them. "What happened to everyone else?"

"They panicked," William replied simply, though Jenny immediately understood. Fear and panic made people careless, and carelessness would always be the biggest killer.

"I got the key, though," Isabelle murmured suddenly, moving shakily over to present Jenny with the blood-splattered thing.

Watching the girl's numb, robotic movements, Jenny knew she had been deeply affected by what had just happened. It wouldn't do to keep the child locked up in a room full of the dead for much longer- it would drive her insane.

"Good job!" she praised, taking the key and putting her best mask on for Isabelle's sake, before turning back to William and muttering, "You said there was some kind of resting bay between each task?"

"Yeah."

"Alright, take this and go get Isabelle settled. See if there's something for her to eat or something warm to drink, and then put her straight to bed, ok?"

She passed him the key and a frown spread across his face. "Why?"

"Because she's seven- she's been through a lot today," Jenny retorted quietly, glancing at the ghostly pale girl a few steps away from them. "And I don't want her to see what we're about to do."

A grim understanding seemed to spread across the young man's face, and he nodded.

"Come on then, Kiddo. Let's go and see what They've left out for us next door," he called, stepping over to take Isabelle's hand and lead her towards the door. The girl was so traumatised that she didn't even ask whether the rest of them were following too.

Jenny waited until the two were through the door and it was closed behind them before she turned back to the others.

"Right, you lot, grab all the bodies and bring them over here," she instructed emotionlessly, glancing around and, for the first time, taking in the mass of devastation lying in their wake.

"What for-"

"-I'm not in the mood for your shit right now, Andrew, so just shut up and do as you're damned well told," Jenny snapped, glaring at the pale man. "These people died a respectful death, fighting for their dreams. We can't bury them properly like they deserve, so we're going to have to cremate them instead."

She ignored the shocked gasps of those around her and, instead, walked over to pull a still flaming torch from the wall. Turning back, she saw a completed pile of bodies beside the dead creature.

"Alright, thank you. I'm not going to force you to stay and watch this bit if you don't want to- you can go and join William and Isabelle in the next room," she told them, striding purposefully back across the room to stand next to the cadavers.

She heard four sets of defeated footsteps leaving the room, but didn't look up- simply stared at the bodies with tears in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she whispered simply, before tossing the torch atop the pile and turning away as the bodies were set ablaze.

A single tear slipped down her cheek as, taking a deep breath, she walked forwards towards the door without once looking back. She couldn't.

_**R&R?**_


	11. Chapter 11

_**A/N: I'm back! And, as promised, here's your Doctor/Pond chapter. It might not make immediate sense, but stick with it. Enjoy :) **_

After what felt like an age of darkness, the Doctor managed to summon enough inner strength to draw open his lead-heavy eyelids. He simply laid and blinked back tears for a moment, allowing himself to adjust to the change in lighting, before pausing as reality hit him. What the hell had happened? He couldn't remember falling asleep, and it certainly didn't feel as though he was laid in his bed, so where the hell was he?

A frown of confusion etching itself into his face, he pulled himself up into a sitting position and glanced around. He appeared to have been placed in a dark, dank, empty stone cell. The only thing keeping him out of total darkness was moonlight shining in through a glassless, barred window placed high in the wall and well out of even his reach. What was this place?

"Think, Doctor, think," he muttered to himself, running a hand through his messy hair. The last thing he remembered was travelling with Jenny. She had just gotten over her latest brush with death, and he had decided to treat her by taking her to... where had he taken her? Space Florida? No, they never actually seemed to end up there- things always got in the way. Klom, then? No, why would he take her to Klom? Klom was boring...

A zoo! He had taken her to a zoo! He laughed aloud as he remembered, before quickly sobering as he realised that he had no memories from that point on at all. Worse than that- he still had no idea where he was or how long he'd been unconscious. And, now he was thinking about it, where was-

"Jenny?" he called aloud, getting to his feet to step anxiously over to the bars keeping him in confinement. He peered out into the corridor beyond his cell, but found it empty. "Jenny, where are you?"

An odd sense of disconcerting perplexity clutched at his hearts as he reached out for the door and watched it easily swing open with hardly any pressure. Something felt very, very wrong about this... Why go to the trouble of putting him in a cell if it wasn't even locked? And where was Jenny?

"Jenny? Are you here?" he called again, taking a step out into the corridor to peer into the cells opposite his own. Nothing.

The Doctor quickly reached into his inside coat pocket to pull out his Sonic Screwdriver, but found it wasn't there. What? Now he was really beginning to panic. His hands flew to every pocket he could find, but the screwdriver was nowhere to be seen. Why take his screwdriver, yet leave his cell door open?

"_Doctorrr..." _

The Doctor froze, hands placed flat on his chest in an attempt to pat the screwdriver into existence, and slowly span on the spot. At the other end of the corridor, silhouetted thanks to the dim light, stood two figures.

"Oh, hello!" the Doctor cried with relief, clapping his hands together and taking a step towards the figures. "I'm the Doctor. Sorry, but I'm a bit confused- you wouldn't happen to have seen my daughter, would you? It's just-"

He stopped talking suddenly as, simultaneously, the figures stepped into a shaft of light pooling on the floor from another window nearby. They had been human, once- he was certain of it- but now their skin bubbled and fell away from their frames with the consistency of molten lava. Organs, bones and muscles peeked through the melting outer layers, giving them a horribly disfigured appearance. He could tell one was male, and the other female, because of their body shapes- or what was left of them- and the difference in the length of their hair. The figure to his left had long, matted, coppery hair, whereas the one to his right had short, greasy, sandy locks, but both looked equally grotesque as it fell from their heads in gunky, bloody clumps. Their blank, milky eyes widened but saw nothing, and they suddenly staggered forwards as fast as their decomposing bodies would allow them- a blood-curdling scream escaping their lips in the process.

"Right..." the Doctor managed to croak, before, swallowing the fear and bile rising in his throat, he turned quickly again and glanced hurriedly around for an escape route. If he could just give them the slip, and maybe find the Tardis in the process, he'd be able to do a scan and find out where Jenny was.

There were no exits in immediate sight, but he spotted that there was a sudden, ninety degree bend in the corridor some distance ahead of him. Hoping it would lead him to the Tardis and/or Jenny and his screwdriver, he set off at a run, very aware that the creatures behind him were a lot faster than he had originally imagined, and quickly gaining on him.

"Look, I'm not sure what I've done to upset you- probably broken a couple of thousand laws without realising, as per usual- but I can assure you I mean no harm!" he cried over his shoulder, risking a glance behind him as he made it to the sharp turn in the corridor, hearts racing. The creatures either couldn't understand what he was saying, or weren't listening, because they continued to surge towards him without even a pause.

The Doctor sighed with frustration, and peered down the new stretch of corridor to his left. He spotted a door around two hundred feet from him. It wasn't his Tardis, screwdriver or daughter, but at least he'd be able to, maybe, put a good few inches of solid metal between himself and the still approaching creatures screeching behind him. With that in mind, he took off at a sprint again, focusing solely on the door now, and not the creatures behind him.

"_Docccctorrrrrrrr,"_ he heard the creatures yell in unison again, distinctly closer now, but still he didn't look back.

He was less than fifty feet from the door now. He could make out a flashing green light on a keypad beside it that made him believe, with a hopeful flutter of his hearts, that it had been left unlocked- just as his cell had been. That was why, therefore, he was so shocked when the full force of his body hurtling into the solid surface did absolutely nothing to move it.

"What? No, no no!" he cried frustratedly, ignoring the pain now rippling through his entire body and banging his fists against the door. Of course, that achieved absolutely nothing except yet more bruises.

Instead of panicking like he quite easily could have done, however, the Doctor glanced at the creatures again- now only about forty feet from him and rapidly catching up- before turning towards the control panel to the left of the door. He had no screwdriver, no plan, and basically no time, but that didn't matter. He was the Doctor- he'd been in worse situations and scraped through them relatively unharmed... ish.

He tapped experimentally at a few keys, but quickly calculated that the probability of him cracking the code in the time he had was very slim at best. And so, with that realisation, he simply grabbed the front of the panel and, with a grunt, tugged it clean off the wall, exposing dozens of brightly coloured wires underneath.

"_Doccccctorrrrrrrrrrr."_

They were close now; he could almost feel their breath on the back of his neck.

"Erm... eenie, meanie, minie, mo..." He debated with himself for a few more seconds before, sighing closing his eyes, he grabbed a random wire and tugged.

A pair of calloused, cold hands gripped at the back of his shoulders and he felt them tighten around his neck, then, in a blur, he swung out blindly and felt his fist connect with something solid. He whipped around just in time to witness the female creature go careening into the male, causing them both to stumble and fall.

Making most of the moment he had inadvertently created for himself, the Doctor turned back towards the door and saw, with another hopeful flutter of his hearts, that it had slid open a fraction. With a triumphant yell, he managed to prise his fingers into the gap between the door and its frame, and yanked it open. Any icy gust of wind met him- immediately chilling him to his very core- as he peered out into the barren, snowy wilderness beyond the door.

This new revelation only caused more potential problems to pop into the Doctor's head. He wouldn't last very long out in the icy conditions, but, glancing back at the quickly recovering zombie-like beings behind him, he knew he couldn't go back either. He had to decide, therefore, which was the more preferable option- venturing out into the cold and probably freezing to death, or pitting himself against the zombies and probably ending up with his limbs being forcibly removed.

"Doctor!"

The Doctor's head snapped up- suddenly alert. That was Rory calling out to him! But where had it come from? It couldn't have been inside- there was nobody there apart from the creatures and himself- and so- knowing he couldn't very well leave one of his friends to freeze, and taking a deep breath- he plunged into the snow.

"Rory?" he cried out into the white abyss. "Where are you?"

He couldn't see the centurion anywhere, and was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that each step he took through the waist-high snow sent a stab of cold from the tips of his boots right to the top of his head, where it settled to rest as a mind-numbing headache. Why was Rory _here_? The cold was making him feel very strange now, and he found he couldn't order his thoughts for long enough to figure out an answer to his question.

Quite suddenly, his right foot caught on something stuck under the mass of snow around him and he staggered slightly, before falling forwards into the powder. An explosion of pain ripped through him upon impact, and he was momentarily blinded by its intensity. His head throbbed and his hearts were pounding painfully hard against his already bruised ribcage. What was _happening_?

"DOCTOR!"

With the last scream, everything suddenly went eerily silent, and when the Doctor raised his head the entire landscape around him seemed to flicker, fluctuate and change. He wasn't face down in the middle of a snowy wilderness, but stood- in nothing but his boxer shorts, no less- in the Ponds' garden. _How had he gotten there_?

"Doctor?" The call came softer this time, and the Doctor turned back towards the house. Rory stood, silhouetted, in the light that spilled out through the open door.

"R-Rory?" the Doctor asked, voice cracking with confusion and a sudden exhaustion. "How... how did I get here? I was in a prison-"

"-You're not well, Doctor," the younger man sighed, concern now overtaking the wariness that had filled him only moments before. "You've got a fever- you were just seeing things, mate."

And then a burst of recognition rippled in the Doctor's mind and he remembered everything- the psychic paper message, the Galacta Rhinos... the Chen 7...

"No," he whispered, before any remaining strength left his body and he found himself on the floor.

He heard Rory curse from the door- something he usually would have scolded him for- but found he didn't care. Anxious footsteps came pattering down the path, before a pair of strong arms wrapped around him and pulled the shaken Time Lord into a gentle embrace.

"_What's happening to me?"_ he whimpered into Rory's chest, shivering violently.

"It's alright, you're safe," Rory replied soothingly, trying to hug as much of the Doctor's bare skin as he could reach in an attempt to warm his body as his temperature rapidly dropped. "Jenny's gone to search for something that will make you better. She'll be back soon, and then everything will be fine."

The Doctor nodded his head an inch, even though his hearts had dropped into his stomach. He knew that Jenny had set out on a pointless journey. There was no cure for him.

"Where's Amy?" he croaked quietly, suddenly noticing the absence of the other Pond.

Rory stiffened slightly, a rather sheepish look spreading across his face. "Well, you er... you lashed out at her in your delusional state. She's fine, I promise... she's just cleaning up the blood."

If possible, the Doctor fell further into a tired depression as he heard those words. In his hallucinogenic state, he had mistaken his best friends for hideously deformed beasts. And, what was worse, he had harmed Amelia as a result of that.

"I- I hit her?" he stammered, still not quite able to believe it. He tried his hardest not to be a man of violence, yet he had managed to attack one of the people he cared about the most.

"Don't worry; she's not angry with you, Doctor. She's just worried about you- we both are."

Rory didn't realise that that just made everything worse. After everything he had done to them, the Ponds' would be loyal to the very end, and that made the Doctor feel sick. They deserved so much better than him.

"Alright, fun time's over," Rory told him with an almost believable cheer, taking note of the ill man's depressed expression. "Let's get you inside, or you'll catch your death."

And so, allowing Rory to half carry, half drag him back towards the house, the Doctor sighed. "I already have, haven't I?"

_**A/N: I hate myself right now. Poor, poor Doctor. :(**_


	12. Chapter 12

By the time Jenny had rejoined the rest of the group in the next resting bay, they had all collapsed into a bed each and fallen asleep. She was actually glad of this- she didn't feel up to talking to anyone quite yet. Instead, she went and sat next to the fire, allowing its warmth to relax her tense muscles. A small, metal bowl of food and a cup of water had been left atop an open crate next to her by, she assumed, William. Astonishment swept over her as she realised she'd hadn't eaten anything since before her trip with the Doctor to the zoo but, although she knew she needed to eat if she had any chance of forcing herself through this, she found she had absolutely no appetite whatsoever.

Instead, her mind drifted to what had just happened. She had no idea what that creature had been, but it was fierce. Even in a full group of thirteen, six of them had died, so they wouldn't have stood a chance if they'd faced it alone like it had been suggested the people before them had. Those six people had put their trust in Jenny's plan, and she had failed them. But the worst part about it was that a small part of her was happy. Less people meant less competition. If only one person was allowed their wish granted, she wanted to make sure it was her, and less people alive at the end meant there would be less people to argue with over whom got said wish granted.

A small grunt from behind her had Jenny turning to face the sleeping people behind her. But it was nothing- just someone dreaming, perhaps. Glancing at the unconscious people now in front of her, she realised just how easy it would be to finish them all off then and there. They were helpless in sleep, and all it would take would be a knife to the neck and she'd be free to press on to the end, alone. But she couldn't do that. The guilt of what had happened to the others reminded her that she didn't want anyone else's blood on her hands so, sighing quietly to herself, she turned back to face the fire and pulled the riddle she had kept out of her pocket. She hadn't forgotten about it for a second, and now seemed like an appropriate time to try and decode it.

_Solve the puzzles,  
>Fix the key,<br>You're one step closer  
>To finding me.<br>The journey ahead  
>Seems never to cease,<br>But keep your heart clear  
>To find inner peace.<br>I know what you seek,  
>But don't lose your head,<br>As over you cross  
>To the realms of the dead.<br>Once there what you ask  
>Will come with a price;<br>An eye for an eye,  
>Nothing else will suffice.<em>

Jenny scanned the page a few times and found no hidden messages within the text, but neither could she figure out the literal meaning. She supposed that the 'puzzles' could be the tasks that they were supposed to pass- the physical challenge, of which, had already been completed- but knew nothing about the supposed 'key'. Apparently it was broken, otherwise she didn't know why she had to fix it. And who (or what) was this supposed 'me'? Could it be the cure? Or the mysterious 'They' that the others kept talking about? Or was she thinking on too small a scale?

Jenny sighed and scrubbed a hand over her face, trying to clear her mind. Her head was beginning to pound with exhaustion, anxiety and pure annoyance, and she realised that she was going to get absolutely nowhere with the riddle while she felt like this. She needed to recuperate- they all did. As far as she could tell, there was no time limit to how long they could spend in each resting bay, so a couple of days filled with rest and relaxation would be perfect to get them all psyched up for the next task.

With that, and nodding as if to confirm that she was allowed to go to bed, Jenny pulled herself to her feet and sighed heavily. She turned on the spot, only to be met with a silent Andrew standing in front of her. He had a bag on his back, and was holding a pair of medical scissors out in a defensive position in front of him.

Jenny sighed, defeated, and closed her eyes for a moment. "What're you doing, Andrew?"

"I've had enough. I don't know where you've been living, but everyone else here knows this is a competition. You can pretend everyone will make it to the end and get what they want, but I'm more realistic than that. Only one of us can win, and it's going to be me," he replied adamantly.

"Right…" Jenny murmured bemusedly, "So what're you going to do? Kill us all with a pair of scissors?"

"No. I didn't realise you were still awake. I was going to just slip away while you were all asleep and get a head-start on the next task," he told her, deflating slightly and lowering the scissors.

Jenny sighed again. "Andrew, think about this. I mean really, properly think. There were thirteen of us at the beginning of the last challenge, and that number has been pretty much halved in the space of a couple of hours. Do you honestly believe you can survive on your own?"

She watched him contemplate her words for a few moments in silence. She became aware of someone else stirring behind her, but didn't dare turn around to look in case Andrew took his chance and made a break for it. They were stronger when they were together, but, more than that, she didn't want him to go off and complete the tasks by himself.

"I'd rather die than stay here with you lot any longer," he finally concluded, pointing his scissors at her again.

"You're just being selfish," Jenny told him. She knew she was being slightly hypocritical, but she didn't care.

"What's going on?" a voice from behind them asked. Both Jenny and Andrew turned, and saw five faces looking back at them, concern heavy on their features.

"Andrew here thinks he's outgrown the rest of us. He thinks he's got what it takes to make it through the rest of the tasks on his own," Jenny told them, turning back to watch Andrew warily again.

"What? Don't be stupid, Andrew! We need to wait until everyone's rested enough to carry on. Jenny's right- we're strongest when we work together as a team," Laura interjected. She pulled herself into a sitting position on her cot to get a better look at the standing duo in front of her.

"I'm perfectly healthy! Why should I sit here and waste time waiting for you all to recover when I could carry on and get to the end? By the time you're all ready to carry on, I could be back on Earth, enjoying my wish!" Andrew argued, his voice raising to a shout now.

"Going on your own would be suicide. You saw what They pitted us against in the first task- do you think the other two are going to get easier?" William spat, also pulling himself into a sitting position.

"Now wait a minute, because I feel rested enough to carry on as well," a large, muscular black man, who Jenny was yet to learn the name of, added.

"Me too," agreed a petite woman.

"Well there you are!" Andrew cried, "Anyone who wants to stay here and rest can, but we should be able to carry on if we want to!"

Jenny sighed and placed a hand over her face. "We need to stay together. We can't split up- it just means the chance of_ any_ of us surviving becomes lower."

She never raised her voice, because, quite honestly, she didn't have the strength or the will to do so. She knew that, if people wanted to leave, they ultimately had the right to do so, and nothing she could say would stop them if they'd made up their mind, but things would get a whole lot harder for all of them if they did so. She just didn't know whether she was more worried about them getting themselves killed, that she was starting to hope that they _did _get themselves killed, or that they would make it to the end, take the wish and strand the rest of them there for the whole of eternity, and that scared her. It was getting harder for her to distinguish where the line between her compassionate and barbaric self was.

"You're just afraid that we'll get to the end before you and one of us will take the wish," the petite woman spat. She and the muscular man had gone over to stand beside Andrew as Jenny had drifted into her own thoughts, and she only realised that they were now also holding weapons when she looked back up to survey them. The petite woman held the carving knife that William had used as an aid to cook their meal, and the man was in the process of making a home-made explosive out of gauze and a bottle of liquid alcohol he had pulled from one of the many medical bags scattered around the room. There was a lighter in his other hand.

"Please," Jenny almost begged, her voice cracking slightly. "Please think about what you're doing. I don't want this to end in bloodshed. I don't want you to become killers; because once you do, you'll never be able to go back. Come on, I know you're more civilised than this! I know you can rise above it; you're human beings, not animals!"

That was her final attempt to reason with them, and she knew immediately that it hadn't worked. The people in front of her had faces set like stone, and there would simply be no reasoning with them. Instead, she weighed up the possibility of her being able to kill them before they managed to get through the door to the next task. It'd be quite simple- if she threw one of the, now, empty cots at them it'd catch them off guard, knocking the liquid alcohol from the muscular man's hand and perhaps all over himself. In the confusion, she would then have enough time to disarm the petite woman of her knife, slit both hers and Andrew's throats, before setting the muscular man alight with his own lighter and leaving him to burn. She tracked the movements in her head, eyes suddenly glazed over (which didn't go unnoticed by everyone watching her), and plotted every step. It was simple, yet brilliant.

She managed to catch herself just before she was about to put her plan into action, however. How could she preach to them about not having this situation end in bloodshed, and then slaughter three members of the group? She didn't want to set that kind of example to the others- especially Isabelle. The girl was young and without proper guidance- just as Jenny had been at the beginning of her life- and she desperately didn't want Isabelle to go down the same road that she had.

"She has nothing more to say to us; I can tell. Come on- I'm leaving…"

Jenny heard the voices, but she didn't raise her head to watch them leave. She did, however, throw an arm out in front of William to stop him from going after them.

"Let them go," she murmured, glancing up at the angry young man. He seemed quite shocked by her response, but did as she asked and sunk back into his own cot with a curt nod of his head.

When she heard the door slam as Andrew's group left, Jenny looked up at the remaining people around her. Only William, Laura and Isabelle were left.

"Will they be ok?" Isabelle murmured from her cot. The girl hadn't been out from under her covers for the entire of the heated conversation.

Jenny sighed as she plonked herself down on a cot beside her. She reached out and stroked Isabelle's hair, trying her hardest to put on a brave face for the child. "I dunno. Maybe."

She could see by their expressions that none of the others believed her, though, and, if she was being honest, she didn't really believe it herself. How she could have been worried about them getting to the end before her, she didn't know. Her group was bigger, and she doubted that even they would all make it to the end. Not in the state they were in, anyway. Laura's leg was badly cut, William was physically shaking and Isabelle simply looked like a member of the undead.

"Right, let's not worry about them, ok? Let's just get some rest. And who knows- maybe we'll catch them up in the next resting bay," Jenny told them, forcing a smile out at each of them, before lying back in the cot she had claimed as her own. She heard creaks as the others laid down around her, and then silence.

A deep breath escaped her lips before, finding she had nothing more to say, she closed her eyes and let unconsciousness take her.


	13. Chapter 13

_**A/N: So… s'been a while… *coughs guiltily***_

_**The honest to god truth is that life's been a bit mental at the moment, what with exams coming up and rehearsing for plays, etc. etc., which means that I've had major writer's block as a result. But fear not! I know where I'm going with this story and I will finish it if it kills me! **_

It was almost three days (at least, she assumed it was- it was hard to keep track of time with no natural light) before everyone was well rested enough to carry on. In that time even Jenny, who prided herself on having the patience of a saint, found herself getting antsy. She had taken to pacing repeatedly up and down the room just for something to do, and more than once William had suggested she go ahead and let the others catch her up. She had considered this for all of about three seconds, before stubbornness kicked in and she resolved to stay put until everyone was ready. After that she went back to pacing like a caged animal, albeit a little more quietly than she had been before.

She wished she could make her mind up, though. She seemed to be constantly torn between wanting to screw everybody over, and wanting to protect them. What was the matter with her? She had told the Ood that she was prepared to tear whole worlds apart- which she had already done- but she couldn't leave three people to their own devices. Why? She had a feeling it had something to do with the fact that 66% of the trio staying with her were just children. And she was already the reason for William's father's death; she couldn't destroy two generations of the same blood line in only a few days.

She blamed the Doctor for her turmoil. If he hadn't taught her the difference between right and wrong then she could have quite easily let her inner soldier run riot and destroy everything in her path with minimal consequences, just as she had done before she found him again. But the thing was, if she was still that person, would she have even volunteered to save him at all? She doubted it.

"Right, I think we're ready," William's voice came drifting into her subconscious and pulled her back to reality.

She turned from her place by the fire to look at him. "Are you sure?"

"Yep," he replied, smiling. "Isabelle's finished her lunch, Laura's strapped her leg up and I'm… well, I'm fine. So long as you're ok, we can get going."

"Brilliant!" Jenny grinned, jumping to her feet to join the others as they gathered by the door. Isabelle automatically reached out and took her hand in hers, and Jenny gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Right then- stay together, don't do anything stupid and, most of all, don't panic. It'll be fine, ok?"

The others looked less than convinced, but said nothing. Taking a deep breath, Jenny reached out and opened the door. Once again, darkness pooled in front of them, making it impossible to see what they were about to walk in to. They had passed the physical test, though, so this one should be the mental one. Whether it was a puzzle, or a psychological test, however, she didn't know.

"Let's go, then…" she muttered, leading the group through the door and into the abyss of the next room.

Her first impression, as the door swung shut behind them and torches flickered to life along the walls of their own accord, was that this room was a lot smaller than the last task. It was also a strange, long shape. She automatically looked up as she took a step forwards and breathed a sigh of relief when nothing stared back at her.

"Ok, no creatures. That's a start, at least…" she mumbled to herself, dropping Isabelle's hand to move over to a wooden podium situated a few feet in front of them.

"What's that over there?" Laura asked from somewhere behind her, but she wasn't paying much attention.

"Don't touch it if it looks dangerous," Jenny warned her absentmindedly as she reached the podium. A scroll of paper had been neatly placed on its surface, and she reached out to unroll it and read:

_I am at the beginning of existence and the end of the universe,  
>The beginning of the end and the end of time.<br>What am I? _

"Jenny? Are you listening?"

Jenny looked up, frowning, and glanced around to find the voice that was calling her. William and Isabelle were still stood by the door, but Laura stood a few metres ahead of her with something quite large clutched in her hand. The woman looked paler than normal.

"What's that you're holding?" Jenny asked, pointing to the thing that Laura was holding. She threw it reluctantly across the shadowy room, and Jenny caught it with ease. It took the young Time Lord a few seconds to realise that what she was clutching in her hands was actually the bottom half of a severed leg. When she did, her jaw dropped and her eyes boggled, completely shocked. "Argh! Why, why, why, why, why… why did you pick this up? I told you not to touch anything!"

"It's Andrew's leg," Laura replied all too calmly, which only caused Jenny to panic further.

"How the bloody hell do you know that?"

"Because his head's over there…"

Jenny took a deep breath and dropped the leg to the ground, following Laura's gesturing hand across the room and, indeed, setting her sight on a decapitated head that had once belonged on Andrew's body. She closed her eyes for the briefest of moments, internally chastising herself at the small, happy skip of her heart over the fact that there was now one less person to get in her way.

"It's on a grid. There's a grid on the floor," William pointed out, gesturing. And he was right. There was a section of the floor just in front of Laura that spread the width of the room, stopping about a metre from the door at the other side. And on that grid, letters. English letters.

"There are other bits all over the place. They've all been blown to pieces," Isabelle whispered fearfully, and, again, she was right. There were discarded body parts littered all over the grid.

"We shouldn't just leave them there. We should collect the parts together," Laura said, stepping forwards towards the grid.

"No! Nobody move- we don't know what's going on here-" Jenny began, but it was too late. The moment that Laura stepped onto the grid- a square with the letter Q printed on it- an explosive fireball blasted through the concrete letter with all the power of a thousand rifles, and shot skywards, taking a screeching, burning Laura with it.

Jenny heard William and Isabelle yell somewhere behind her in utter shock and horror, but found she couldn't move to look and see if they were alright. The fireball retreated back into the, now, empty space where the tile had been, and- with dull thuds- bloody, burned body parts hit the floor everywhere. Laura was most definitely dead.

For a moment, everything went deathly silent. There really wasn't anything to say about what they had just seen.

"Right… Moving on, then," Jenny muttered when she found her voice again, moving rather shakily back over to the podium to give the paper another read. "Do me a favour, yeah? Don't stand on the grid until I've figured out how to get across safely."

"How can you be so heartless?" William cried, leading Isabelle by the hand over to where Jenny stood. "Laura, she just… her body…" He couldn't even finish his sentence, he was so shocked.

Jenny sighed heavily. "There's nothing we can do for her now, William. I'll grieve later- my number one priority right now is making sure we make it through ok. I know it's hard, but I need you to focus, alright? We can't give up- she wouldn't have wanted us to."

She reached up and cupped one side of William's face in her hand, reaching out to cup Isabelle's with the other. They both looked as though they were about to be violently sick, but, with a strength that even Jenny couldn't quite understand, they each took a deep breath, and nodded.

"Ok. What's on the paper?" William asked, pointing a shaky finger towards the podium.

"'I am at the beginning of existence and the end of the universe, the beginning of the end and the end of time. What am I?'" Jenny quoted from memory without even skipping a beat.

"It's a riddle," Isabelle chipped in.

"It is indeed," Jenny replied with a small smile, before turning to face the grid. "And I think the answer is spelt out somewhere on that grid."

"So, what? We figure out what the answer is and then step on the squares that are safe? The squares that spell out the answer?" William asked.

"I'm pretty sure, yeah," she nodded.

"But you're not certain?"

Jenny looked up and gave them both a warning glance. Right now, more than anything, she needed them to trust her. It had been down to human error that had, so far, gotten so many people killed. As the only one who wasn't human, she liked to think that she knew what she was doing… ish.

"Alright," William sighed in defeat. "So we have to work out the riddle?"

"Well, that's the easy bit! If you'd all listened to me in the first place, you'd know that I'm quite clever, and therefore worked the clue out straight away," Jenny told them both with a grin, tapping each of them on the head with the rolled up scroll before spinning to look at the grid in front of them.

"If you're so clever, what's the answer, then?" William asked, stepping up beside her.

"The letter E."

"I don't understand…" Isabelle said after a moment of slightly confused silence.

Jenny sighed and turned round to face the others again. "The beginning of 'existence' is the letter E, the end of 'the universe' is the letter E, the beginning of 'end' is E, and the end of 'time' is E. Do you get it now?"

"Could it really be that simple?" William asked. "Not something philosophical and long-winded?"

"Don't think so, but just in case…" Jenny screwed up the scroll of paper and stepped up to the edge of the grid, careful not to step on the squares. She took a sweeping glance of the first row, before locating a square with the letter E imprinted on it and carefully throwing the paper onto it. With a deep breath, she threw the paper towards it. All three cowered back slightly, preparing themselves should the tile explode in their faces again, but after a few seconds of silence Jenny lifted her head and saw that nothing had happened.

"Are we dead?" Isabelle whispered, glancing around.

"Nope," Jenny replied with a grin, pointing to the paper now resting on the still intact E tile. "And look- I think we've found our answer."

"Can we hurry up and get across, then?" William asked. "I'm really not comfortable being in a room full of scattered body parts."

"Right, yes, of course," Jenny replied, nodding. "I'll go first then, shall I? Isabelle- you go after me and follow my every move. William, are you alright bringing up the rear?"

"Sure."

With a swift nod of her head and a sharp intake of breath, Jenny turned back towards the grid and took a moment to map out her journey. When she had found an E on each row, she threw caution to the wind and took a calculated leap onto the first tile. She landed directly in the centre of the tile, and allowed the breath she had been holding to escape her lips.

"Right, ok…" she muttered, glancing between the two E tiles on the next row and trying to decide which was nearer. She took another deep breath and leapt to the left. Once her feet were firmly planted on the second E tile, she turned back to face the others. "Isabelle- you're alright to hop onto the first tile now. Just be careful- it's not as far away as you might think. Don't jump too far."

The young girl nodded, before stepping up to the edge of the grid and jumping onto the first tile with relative ease. She grinned, breathing a sigh of relief, when she realised she'd made it. Jenny shot her a reassuring grin, before moving onto the next tile. There was a low grunt from somewhere behind her, alerting her to the fact that William leapt onto the first tile as Isabelle moved onto the second.

"Everyone alright?" she called behind her, with the simple response of "yeah" reaching her a few moments later.

They moved forwards in a comfortable silence for a good few minutes with no problems, only pausing when Jenny stopped to work out her next move. She was focused solely on leading her two young companions to safety, not even allowing thoughts of Laura's body tearing apart in mid-air to enter her mind. She was treading the line of falling into soldier mode again- almost completely detached from all else around her.

Then, suddenly and completely unexpectedly, a scream reached her ears and she turned quickly, careful not to move off the tile she was safely stood on.

"No!"

She didn't know who had screamed; everything seemed to have slowed right down. She watched as Isabelle attempted to jump onto the tile behind her- watched her foot catch on the groove of the tile she was moving from, causing her to go flailing forwards with no hope of reaching safety- without any hope of catching her. Before it'd even registered properly in her head, Isabelle hit the ground with a scream that Jenny knew would forever haunt her dreams, before the young girl's body was thrown back into the air by a domino effect of fireballs that had her disintegrating in seconds- a look of pure terror melting off her face.

"Jenny? Jenny! Oh god, my chest!"

She realised William had been screaming at her, but her hearing seemed to be short-circuiting. Why? She looked up at her one remaining companion and saw him beating ruthlessly at his chest, trying desperately to put out the flames that had set his shirt ablaze. His lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.

Jenny reached a trembling hand up and touched her face, before hissing in pain and yanking it away again. She had burnt her head- badly. At this stage she couldn't tell how badly, but she had got a face full of fireball and it was hurting like a bitch. Her sight was compromised and her ears were ringing terribly.

It was then that she noticed that William was crying. Sobbing, actually. She focused really hard on his lips and strained her crackling ears, trying desperately to work out what he was saying. After a few moments, his voice swam into her head, and another few moments after that the words began to make sense.

"-I can't do this! Please, I don't want to die- I just want to go home! She was just a kid- she was seven- how is any of this justified? How can nobody have told us what goes on here before now? I just can't-"

"-William!" she croaked, adding a damaged larynx to her list of potential injuries. "Calm down!"

"How can I calm down? I'm going to die- we're both going to die! There's nothing we can do to stop it! We're both going to die and then my family will die because I won't come back with the money for them. I can't let them die, Jenny! And Isabelle, she was only seven-"

And then Jenny snapped. She could feel the stirrings of a regeneration creeping into the corners of her mind and fought against it with every inch of strength that she had, but, in the process, momentarily lost all sense of who she was. Her inner soldier was free.

"You know what? Fuck it! If you want to stay here and pussy foot about, be my guest. I'm leaving now. Do whatever the fuck you want."

And, without a second glance at William's suddenly shocked face, she turned again and forced herself to keep moving forwards, using all of her remaining strength to jump across the last few tiles and not backwards to throttle William with her bare hands. She then stepped onto a patch of plain concrete by the door and strode over to the wood, not even looking back as she opened it and stepped through into the next room.

_**A/N: Say whattttttt? I've been away for this long and then I drop that bomb on you all? Well, what can I say? I'm fucked in the head like that :)**_

_**R&R?**_


	14. Chapter 14

_**A/N: Hello again! So, not quite as long a wait between chapters this time, but still not quite good enough, right? Sorry about that- I had my AS drama exams last week (which went very well, thank you for asking), so I haven't really had time to write this. I've cobbled together quite a long chapter as way of an apology :')**_

_**I'd also like to say thank you to you all for reviewing/ favouriting/ alerting this story. I don't often say it, but it really does make my day that so many people are enjoying this. :D**_

Almost an hour had passed since Jenny left William behind in the last task, and he still hadn't emerged through the door. Not that she cared any more. Her number one priority now was healing her face and neck before the injuries got so bad that she couldn't fight off the recurring tingling of an oncoming regeneration and just exploded in a golden hue all over the place. She wondered how she'd managed to hold it off this long- she'd never been able to before- but quickly put it down to her determination that nothing was going to slow her down now. She wasn't like a normal Time Lord; she didn't regenerate like the Doctor. After the initial burst of golden energy, it could take her up to a month to fully change appearance. A full month that had her completely incarcerated the entire time. She couldn't afford to waste that kind of time.

Her hands shook as she rummaged through the boxes of supplies left for her in the resting bay, searching desperately for something that might take the pain away from her injuries. Her sight and hearing still wasn't great, so that didn't help matters at all, but she knew her body well enough to realise that that wasn't the reason for her quaking. She was afraid. Afraid that she could no longer control her anger (the trashed resting bay was evidence enough of that), afraid she'd regenerate and lose time, afraid for the Doctor's sake, and, most confusingly of all (which only caused more fear to take hold), afraid that, now she had calmed down a bit, she had done the wrong thing by leaving William behind.

_No_, she told herself firmly, tugging a packet of industry strength pain killers and a tube of, what she assumed was, healing cream from the bottom of the only crate she hadn't yet destroyed in her earlier fit of rage. _William is weak. They all were. That's why they're dead, and you're still here. It's survival of the fittest- just a difference in genetics. The strongest survive, end of._

She ripped the packet of painkillers apart and stuffed a handful into her mouth, swallowing painfully hard, before smearing the tube of paste across her face and neck. There was no one there to judge her, so she really didn't care how stupid she looked.

Taking a deep breath, she got shakily to her feet. A part of her desperately wanted to give up and sit down, but she ignored this part of her (the sensible part) and moved over to the next door at the far side of the room. If she could just power through the pain, she was certain that she could survive on adrenaline alone long enough for her body to repair itself without the need for regeneration. At least, that's what she hoped.

Her head was already fuzzy from the, most probably, dangerous amounts of pain medication she had taken by the time she got to the door. It took a few moments of staring at the solid surface to realise that there was something different about this door… There was writing on it! Jenny squinted, willing her eyes to focus properly so she could make out the words on the door.

_Sink to swim. _

Was that it? Jenny tilted her head like an inquisitive dog, hoping she'd understand the words better from a different angle. Nothing. So what was that supposed to mean? She found she couldn't quite think properly, and cursed herself for swallowing so many pills.

Figuring that she'd soon find out what the riddle meant anyway, she took a deep breath, reached out, and pushed the door open. It swung open with a creak, and only darkness lay beyond.

"Well, no time like the present," Jenny muttered to herself, before stepping forward into the room.

As soon as she crossed the threshold, she had to dodge the door as it slammed closed with a dull thud behind her. There were a number of clicks, and it became apparent that she'd been bolted in. _Brilliant._

As with the other two challenges, torches flared into life as she stepped into the centre of the huge, cavernous space. This room was easily as large as the first, if not bigger, but without the homicidal octopus on the ceiling, she realised with a sigh of relief upon looking up. There was, however, another door placed in the wall at least fifty feet above her, just below the ceiling. There was also an old fashioned, pirate-ship-wheel-esque crank in the same place as the door on the opposite wall.

"Well how in the name of sanity am I supposed to get up there?" she asked aloud, frowning.

She stood, pondering her options for a few minutes in complete silence, before there was an unexpected bang from somewhere behind her. She rotated quickly on the spot, bringing her fists up to protect her from whatever beastly force was being thrown at her now. She was, therefore, shocked to see an all too familiar figure stood by the newly closed door.

"William?" she asked, slightly shocked. She had assumed that, by now, he would have been blown apart in the last challenge, just like the others. She found that she wasn't angry with him anymore, though. The fury that had burned inside her only an hour ago had now been extinguished, and replaced with pain and exhaustion.

"You seem surprised," he spat in reply, stepping across the huge space towards her. As he passed through a patch of torch light, contempt burst from his eyes. "What? Did you think I'd been blown to bits?"

"Honestly? Yes," Jenny replied truthfully, watching the young man warily as he strode purposefully towards her. She didn't like the way he was looking at her. "If it's any consolation, I'm sorry. I had to get away- it was too much. It was either leave you or kill you myself-"

"-SHUT UP!" William screamed, swiftly stepping in front of Jenny and bringing his hand round to strike her across the face. She fell away, reeling. "All you ever do is talk! And at first I trusted what you said- when you said we should stick together, it made sense. I thought we'd be stronger together, but getting to know each other just made us weaker! It just made everything more difficult when they died. And that's your fault!"

Jenny looked up from her place on the floor, rubbing her quickly bruising cheek in shock. She wasn't going to pretend that she knew William, but she had certainly never seen this side of his character before. He had always seemed so calm and gentle- so well put together- that, honestly, she was a little frightened.

"William, I-"

"-NO! IT'S YOUR FAULT THAT THEY'RE DEAD," he screeched, face set. "And I can't bring them back… but I can avenge them!"

Jenny barely had time to process this before William had launched himself on her, punching and kicking every inch of her that he could find. She didn't fight back, just tried to protect her already aching face as best she could.

"William! Calm down, for god's sa-"

The wind was knocked out of her as William thrust his knee into her ribs, and she didn't finish her sentence. She tried to roll away from his onslaught, batting him aside, but in the process one of her flailing fists connected with his jaw and he fell away, crying out in pain. This gave Jenny just enough time to pull herself shakily to her feet. She had to hunch over; the pain in her ribs meant she couldn't straighten up properly, and she clutched her middle tightly with a protective arm. She reached up with her other hand and wiped something sticky away from her nose. It was blood.

Neither of them spoke for a few, tense moments. The only thing that kept them from lapsing into complete silence was the sound of their ragged breathing. William slowly clambered to his feet, panting, and the two stared at each other from across the room. Neither moved, simply choosing to gage the other's reaction to the sudden change in dynamic between them.

"Look, William," Jenny started, taking advantage of his silence, "I know you're upset, and grieving, and you have every right to be angry with me-"

"-You're doing it again!" he yelled, gesturing incredulously towards her. "You think your words make everything better, but they don't! How can you possibly justify what you've done with words? How can you justify it at all?"

"It's not my fault!" Jenny snapped, feeling her anger begin to rise again. "It's not my fault that humans are too stupid to listen to instruction! It's not my fault that any of them were here in the first place! It's not my fault that you've been acting like a child- if you knew you wouldn't be able to handle screwing people over to get what you want, why did you come here in the first place? You're just projecting your own guilt onto me, but you have no right- none whatsoever- to do so! It's not my fault that you're weak!"

"Weak?" William was quiet now, and, in a way, it was even worse than if he had screamed at the top of his lungs. "WEAK?"

He surged forward, but this time Jenny was ready for him. Grounding herself by planting her feet firmly on the floor, she opened her arms and received William as he threw himself at her, using the power of his blow against him and throwing herself on him as he lost his balance whilst slamming into her chest. They both went hurtling to the floor, Jenny landing on top of William, and her hands immediately found his throat. She squeezed, hard, and William coughed violently, choking. His fingernails scratched at her hands, trying desperately to get her to let go, but Jenny ignored it. He was turning blue.

"Is this how you imagined you'd die, then?" she growled, leaning right in so their faces were almost touching. She wanted to make sure she was the last thing William saw before he died. "Blackness creeping into the corners of your vision; throat burning, craving the air that's all around you- the air that you can't have?"

William's eyes flickered, and Jenny took great pleasure in watching as the life slowly left them. His struggling was becoming weaker and weaker- his hands shaking and body going limp.

Then, quiet suddenly and completely unexpectedly, a grating roar shook the whole room and Jenny instinctively looked up, expecting to find another octopus hanging from the ceiling. Instead, she was met with a wall of water that had come crashing through a newly made opening in the wall to her left. Her grip on William slackened and she had just enough time to yell out in surprise before she was swept away from him completely and submerged in an icy cold sheet.

Her back hit something hard, and she realised the force of the water quickly filling the room was pinning her against the wall- the current pressing the air from her lungs. She didn't struggle; a half-formed memory sparked in the back of the head telling her to wait until the room was fuller so she could propel herself through the water to the surface more easily. The torches had been extinguished by this point, so she couldn't tell where William had floated off to, or whether he was even still alive. All she could hope for was that she could hold her breath long enough to pull herself out of the current.

The cold of the water was beginning to seep into her bones, constricting her lungs and windpipe even more, and the lack of oxygen was beginning to take its toll on her. She looked up, seeing the surface was now at least halfway up the room. Steeling herself against the cold, she kicked out against the, now, weaker current, and used her hands to guide herself up the wall and towards the promise of air. She'd be able to relax and move at her own pace once she got above the hole in the wall behind her that water was still gushing from; the current seemed to be flowing down towards grates in the corner of the room that she hadn't noticed before now.

Jenny's head broke the surface and she sprayed a mouthful of water out of her mouth and nose, before gasping aloud with a sudden intake of air. Her lungs ached and protested, but the chill of the water was doing her burns a world of good. Relief washed over her in the knowledge that- for now, at least- she was safe. Well, as long as she didn't freeze to death or drown before she figured out how to get out, anyway.

"William?" she cried, voice horse, as she spun in the water, trying to spot any sign of him. "William?"

She couldn't find him. The surface of the water swirled ominously around her, but she couldn't make out any sort of body shape floating around amidst it. She kicked out into the centre of the room anyway, squinting through the darkness to try and find the boy. The sudden blast of icy cold spray had shocked the fury out of her, and now all she felt was worry.

"William? If you're here, just shout! Give me some sort of sign- any sign!"

She got no response, as she had assumed. Sighing in frustration, she span in the water once more to make sure she hadn't missed anything (though, in the dark, there could have been a ten foot banana a few feet away from her and she wouldn't have been able to see it), before propelling herself back towards the wall. She was almost there, when she felt something snake around her foot. Jumping in surprise, she tried to tug herself free, but whatever was holding her wasn't letting up. Thinking quickly, she took a deep breath and dipped her head under the water. It took her eyes a few seconds to adjust, but eventually a lanky body swam into her view. William's eyes were wide and fearful, and he was flailing about without really going anywhere. _He couldn't swim._

Without thinking, Jenny plunged fully into the water and hooked her hands under William's armpits. He fought at first- probably thinking that she was trying to attack him again- but his attempts to get away got weaker and weaker as his lungs screeched for air. She didn't know how he'd managed to hold his breath even this long, especially seeing how he'd been so short of breath before the water had even come crashing down on him.

Jenny gave a forceful tug, and kicked desperately with her legs to keep treading water and hold William's weight as she propelled them both back towards the surface. She pushed William up ahead of her, and his head broke the surface before hers, but she soon followed, gasping for air once again.

"Are you alright?" she asked, still gripping William tightly to avoid him plunging below the surface again.

"No! You tried to kill me!" he cried, kicking wildly to try and keep himself afloat.

"Yeah, well, you made me cross!"

"_Cross? _Cross enough to _kill me?_"

"Look, I tried to warn you- I told you that I left you because I couldn't cope, that it was leave you or kill you! What can I say? I'm a bit unhinged…" Jenny shrugged, brushing William's incredulous expression aside. "Look, I know you're a bit miffed or whatever, and I can understand that, but we can still both get out of this. All we have to do is complete this task, and then we never have to see each other again. Deal?"

She watched William's reaction carefully, very aware that he could quite easily go mental again and try to drown her. A similar thought seemed to cross his face for the briefest of moments, before his whole body relaxed and he sighed.

"Alright."

Jenny smiled. "Brilliant. Right, first things first- can you swim at all, or am I going to have to keep hold of you the entire time?"

"I live in a city- why would I ever need to learn how to swim?" William asked.

"For cases similar to this, I imagine!" Jenny cried.

"Yeah, well, I don't plan on getting myself into something like this ever again, thanks."

"Right," Jenny sighed, frustrated. "It's fine that you can't swim. I can keep a hold of you long enough for us to rise to the ceiling, so long as you keep kicking your legs with me to help keep us afloat. Sound fair?"

"Yeah," William nodded, "But what do we do once we rise to the top of the room?"

"I assume we have to wind that wheel up there to get the door to open, and then flow out into the next room with the water."

"Well that doesn't sound too difficult," William scoffed.

"Says the guy who can't swim…" Jenny muttered under her breath.

Luckily for them, the water level rose exceedingly quickly, but that didn't reduce the cold that was quickly stiffening their muscles. By the time they were in reach of the crank, both were shivering violently and Jenny noticed that William's lips were blue.

"Alright," she spluttered, guiding William over to the crank and allowing him to cling to it. "We wind the wheel, and when the door is open wide enough for us to slip through, I'll signal to let go and the current of the water flowing through the door should take us with it. You'll have to hold your breath, but we'll move that quickly that it should only be for a couple of seconds."

William nodded, unable to talk as he was so cold. Jenny was coping better, what with her advanced Time Lord genes, but she could tell that he was really beginning to struggle. She had to get him out of the water and into dry clothes as soon as possible.

"Ok, let's go," she breathed, before moving up beside William to begin turning the crank.

She could tell it was working immediately, as her legs were tugged towards the door which now had a steadily growing crack in it as it slid open, and braced herself against the crank to get a tighter hold as she and William pushed. Only a few more winds and…

"Now! Let go!" she cried as the door slid open wide enough to fit their bodies through it. She dropped into the depleting water and heard William do the same, before she was dragged along by the current towards the exit.

She closed her eyes, content to let the water take her to safety, and was therefore shocked when her back, once again, hit something hard. Her eyes snapped open and she span, only to realise that the door had slid shut again as they'd let go of it. Anger flared in her as she realised what that meant.

Snatching hold of a thrashing, panicking William's arm, she pulled him along with her back to the surface, and took yet another deep breath as she came up for air.

"What happened?" William cried, spitting a mouthful of water out as Jenny carted him back over to the crank- water now refilling the room through the still open patch of wall below them.

"The door slides closed when we let go of the wheel. It must have to be held in place to keep the door open for any length of time," she replied.

"Well there must be some way of holding it. Maybe we can jam it with something or-"

"-I was wrong, William," Jenny breathed softly, stopping the boy in his tracks and surprising even herself.

"W-what do you mean?" he asked after a short pause, suddenly confused.

"Only one of us can win," she replied slowly, suddenly defeated. "One of us has to stay and hold the door open, while the other is carried through by the current."

And there it was- the final task. A test of emotional strength. One of them had to prove their bravery and selflessness by staying behind, while the other had to be strong enough to live with the knowledge that they had allowed someone to die for them. It seemed, either way, neither of them were winners now. One would walk away a haunted person; the other wouldn't walk away at all.

"No," William muttered, shaking his head stubbornly. "No, that can't be right. There must be something we can do- come on! You've always got an answer for everything; there must be another way! A way for us both to get out!"

"There isn't."

"Well, I don't believe you," he told her firmly, reaching out to grab hold of the crank again. "We just have to open the door all the way- it'll give us more time to get through."

Jenny admired the never-say-die attitude William seemed to have suddenly adopted, but she knew his efforts were fruitless. She realised that she had always known- a simple calculation told her that the room was just too large to allow them to pass through the door in the allotted time before it slid closed, even if it was fully open to begin with. One of them had to die, and, with heavy hearts, she realised it had to be her. William stood no chance of surviving in the water much longer- he would freeze to death before he even drowned- but Jenny could regenerate. She could get William out and possibly (probably not) still save herself in the process.

But even if she did regenerate, she'd still be in a room filled with water. She'd just keep drowning over and over again until she eventually ran out of regenerations, or her body couldn't take it anymore, or whatever happened in these sorts of situations. Had this happened to a Time Lord before? She doubted it.

She realised that William had started to wind the wheel, and reached out quickly to grip it. She wasn't letting him trick her into being pulled away by the current!

"William, stop," she told him quietly, but firmly. A look of pure concentration had come across the boy's face, and he ignored her. "William, please, listen to me."

"No," he replied shortly, still winding.

"William, really, it's alright. I'll stay behind-"

"No! We can both go home; we can both get what we want."

"We can't, William, and you know it," Jenny murmured sadly. "You have a family to think about. You need to go home to them."

And, sighing shakily, William finally came to a stop. The door was now half open and water flowed through it, but they both clung to the crank for all they were worth.

"I just… I can't go back by myself," he whispered, looking directly at Jenny. "The Earth needs to know what goes on here, but I… I'm not strong enough to tell them. I know I said some things, but you're so much better at talking than I am. You'd be able to make them understand; make them stop sending others here. I need you with me."

Jenny sighed heavily. He wasn't going to budge of his own accord. She didn't even know why she wanted him to. Probably because she had finally let her barriers down, and all the guilt and grief over the others' deaths was starting to grind on her. She couldn't let William die, too. She just couldn't. So, she did the only thing she could think of.

"William, there's something I need to tell you."

"What?" he asked, brow suddenly furrowed.

"I was the one who let the bomb off on the space station. I'm the reason your father's dead."

"_What?" _

She told the truth.

She watched as William's grip on the crank weakened in shock, and heard the splash as he slipped and fell into the water below. Clutching the crank as tightly as she could, she saw his form get washed along with the current, and then disappear from sight through the door.

The next thing she knew, she was in the water, and realised she must have let go of the wheel at some point. She didn't even make it halfway across the room before the door slid closed, and she came to a calm, resigned stop, floating on her back with her face to the ceiling.

She was alone.

_**A/N: So there you are! I'm thinking one more chapter, and then I'll do another Doctor/ Pond one. Sound fair? :)**_

_**R&R? Thanks guyssss x**_


	15. Chapter 15

_**A/N: I have my English Literature AS Level exam today. Should have been revising. Did this instead. Hope you enjoy! :)**_

Five minutes. That was how long Jenny estimated she had left to live. It was a simple calculation, really, but she found that, in her frozen state of half consciousness, it took her much longer than it should have done to work out.

She drifted through the icy water on her back, staring up at the ceiling as it quickly moved closer and closer with the rising water, carrying her with it. She had given up. There was simply no way out of her predicament. The worst thing, though, was that she had let the Doctor and Ponds down. She had forsaken the life of her father so an ungrateful, puny little human could go home to his family. All she could picture was the Doctor's crumpled, broken body; a grave with his name on it; a sobbing River and Amy, and a pale, withdrawn Rory. She thought about how the universe would suffer as a result of her moment of weakness; how, with her and the Doctor gone, the TARDIS would be left to rot and nobody would be there to step in and protect those in need. She had failed.

She closed her eyes, expecting to be met with the ceiling forcing her under the water any moment. Her breathing came in short, laboured gasps, and the icy liquid was causing her muscles to spasm and then tense painfully. The tingle of an oncoming regeneration was already back, and it was all she could do not to give in and let herself be taken by it. She hated that, even now, her inner instinct to survive still flickered within her. Her body still automatically wanted to keep working even though she, in her mind, didn't.

Frowning, she wondered why she wasn't dead yet. It had definitely been longer than five minutes, and yet she wasn't being forced under the water by the irritatingly solid ceiling. She opened her eyes slowly- even her eyelids were beginning to freeze closed by this point- and realised that she was in the same position as she had been five minutes ago, floating about a foot below the ceiling. What the hell was going on?

A little spark of hope flared somewhere in her chest as she forced herself to pivot in the water to look below her. From what she could tell, water was still pouring into the room. She couldn't be sure if it was the same amount per minute, but surely it would still push her upwards towards the ceiling even if it _was_ at a slower pace? As far as she could tell, she hadn't moved at all in the last five minutes.

It was only then that she remembered the message on the door. _Sink to swim. _What could that mean?

"Ok, think about this rationally. Water is still flowing into the room, but the volume isn't increasing. That means…" She shook her head, trying to clear it. "That means…" Why was this so difficult? "That means that the amount of water now entering the room must also be exiting the room at the same pace!" She paused for a moment, before it clicked. "The vents!"

She had forgotten about the vents in the floor- the vents that she had recognised before as where the current of the water was heading. How could she only have remembered that now? Sink to swim- sink to _live. _The riddle made sense now. She had to sink to the bottom of the room and through the vent in order to save her life… she hoped.

It was, right now, the only reasonable idea she had. If nothing else, the dive down would work some blood back into her aching muscles. With that thought now planted firmly in her mind, she took a deep, rattling breath, and plunged under the water. Her head immediately began to ache as it was gripped by icy, liquid hands, but she ignored it, cutting stiffly through the water towards the hole where it was pouring through into the room. If she could just get in front of it, the current of water being dragged down towards the vents would carry her down with it, and it'd cost her less of her quickly depleting energy. Her lungs screamed for air, but she ignored it- focused solely on reaching her goal.

A few more strokes and she was swept up in the current, spiralling quickly down towards the vents at the bottom of the room. The sudden change in pressure jolted her, but she kept her mouth tightly closed and managed to keep from taking a shocked intake of breath through her nose.

She was slammed into the metal grate much harder than she had anticipated, and a series of bubbles exploded from her mouth as a result. The pressure of thousands of gallons of water pressing down on her was almost unbearable now, so she quickly reached out and yanked the grate away from the floor. She barely had time to throw the metal sheet away before she was sucked into the vent by the current. Pain shot through her body as she rattled along the vent, smashing into the walls as she was tugged along by the current. All she could do was curl up into a ball to protect her head, and hope it would soon be over. Her thoughts were becoming incoherent with the lack of oxygen in her lungs, and a speckled darkness was creeping into the corners of her vision.

Just when she thought things couldn't get worse, she smacked into a protruding corner so hard that it had her straightening out in pain. Before she had a chance to get over that, something incredibly solid and hard collided with her head and, without another thought, everything went black.

* * *

><p>A sharp, piercing gasp escaped Jenny's lips when she finally came too. She coughed, and at least a pint of water gushed out of her mouth. Panting and completely disorientated, her eyes flew open and she was met with a blinding white light. She squinted, assuming the light was just her eyes getting used to the sudden change in light, but after a few long minutes it didn't get any better.<p>

Groaning, she forced herself onto her side to see if she could work out where the hell she was or what had happened, but, instead, was met with a polished pair of leather shoes and the bottom halves of a pair of smart grey trousers. She rolled away quickly, yelling incoherently with shock, and sprang to her feet. Her vision blurred and her aching body protested, and for a moment she was certain she would black out again, but she focused on staying upright and it soon passed.

"Who are you?" she asked warily.

The person stood opposite her smiled and his rat-like features stretched grotesquely. He was a scrawny man- human in appearance, apart from the completely black eye balls that stared across at her. Physically, he looked harmless, but Jenny couldn't help feeling as though he held some sort of hidden power that could, potentially, have very dangerous consequences for her.

"I have no name," the man replied simply. His voice was higher than she would have expected, but held a malice that only confirmed her fear about hidden power.

"_What_ are you, then?" Jenny rephrased, talking a curious step forwards. "Where are we?"

"We are everywhere, and nowhere. As to what I am… I think I am known as 'They' by most that come here."

Jenny realised that he hadn't actually answered either one of her questions, but she didn't push it any further. If he was telling the truth, this man was behind the entire Games and, inadvertently, the reason for so many deaths. He was every bit as dangerous as she had originally thought, even if his villainy didn't come first hand. Actually, in a way, the fact that he used methods that would not incriminate him personally made him all the more dangerous; because it meant that he was clever as well. Clever and dangerous were not a good mix- Jenny knew that all too well.

"Am I… am I dead?" she asked, glancing around at the white space she was trapped in. There were no windows or doors- no water, more importantly, that could have brought her here- and there didn't even appear to be a floor, but she was stood levelly without floating. When she took a step her feet hit something solid, but there was nothing there- just endless whiteness. It seemed only reasonable that she must be dead.

"I shouldn't think so. I'd say you're very much alive, actually."

"Then how did I get here? I was in a vent full of water!" Jenny cried, incredulous. Her head was still throbbing from the lack of oxygen getting to her brain and the numerous beatings she had taken, and she hated that she didn't understand what was going on. She was like the Doctor in that respect- she liked to know everything, all the time.

"How does one get anywhere?" the man asked with a sly grin, head cocked slightly to the side like an inquisitive dog.

If she hadn't felt her body might soon collapse in on itself with exhaustion, Jenny would have attempted to strangle the man with her bare hands. She was tired and irritable as it was, and she wasn't in any sort of mood to have any more riddles piled on her. The sooner she could get out of here and find somewhere to sleep and recuperate, the better.

"I'm not really in the mood for riddles at the moment," she growled as civilly as she could muster. "Just give me what I want and let me be on my way."

"I'm sorry… I'm not sure I understand," the man said with a frown.

"My 'wish'? That's the legend, right? Whoever makes it to the end gets what their heart most desires?" Jenny paused as a wave of terror fell over her. "That… that's right… isn't it? I've not come all this way for nothing, right?"

The man simply smiled, and gestured to a point somewhere behind Jenny's left shoulder. She span on the spot, still not used to the fact that there was no visible solid surface keeping her upright, and scanned the seemingly endless space behind her. After a few seconds of looking, she spotted a small, brightly wrapped package floating in the air a few feet away, within a jumps reach above her.

She suddenly felt light-headed with giddiness as she surged forward and grabbed the package out of thin air. This could be it- this could be the cure for her father. She couldn't contain herself as she ripped the paper off the gift, but frowned when two small, metallic objects fell out. She scooped them up and walked back over to the man, ignoring the fact that he was now wearing a party hat and a stupid grin, with a party blower in his mouth and a party popper in his hands.

"What's this?" she asked, holding them up for him to see.

"Your gift! Congratulations!" he cried, blowing the party blower and letting the popper explode all over her.

Jenny tore the brightly coloured streamers off her clothes where they had settled and threw them to the floor. "I don't want this!"

"You may not want it, but you need it."

Jenny paused before she got too angry to control herself. She looked from the TD in her left hand, to the random rod of bronze coloured metal in her right, before she held the latter up in front of her. "What even is this?"

"A necessity."

"JESUS, WHY WILL NOBODY GIVE ME A STRAIGHT ANSWER?" She was dangerously close to losing it again.

"Have you ever thought that, perhaps, not always having everything you wish for is best?" the man asked, head still cocked to one side. It was oddly disconcerting.

Jenny couldn't help but feel as though there was a hidden meaning behind his words, though. If she was honest with herself, that thought frightened her. Were his words, somehow, foreshadowing an event to come? That, perhaps, she couldn't get the cure for her father? Her heart dropped at the mere thought.

"Right… Sorry, but I'm tired, and very much not in the mood to be trying to figure out your mystic mumbo jumbo so, er, I'll be off now. That alright?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

"By all means, leave," the man replied, gesturing to the TD with another disconcerting smile on his face.

"Right then, I'll-"

"-Are you not going to ask, then?"

Jenny, once again, paused. "What?"

"The question on your mind. Are you not going to ask it?"

Jenny's eyes flew open. How could he possibly…?

"Ask it, prodigal child," the man commanded with a sudden change in his voice that had Jenny taking a step away from him. Hidden power, check.

"Is William ok?" Her voice was a lot shakier than she would have liked. Damn it, she was acting like a weakling in front of him!

The man smiled, but it was unlike any smile he had given her before. This smile held no joy- only evil and malice and death and destruction. It caused fear to clutch at Jenny's hearts. Why would he force her to ask him a question if all he was going to do was smile?

"Did he make it home? Did you give him the money for his family?" she tried again, but was met with a dark bout of laughter this time.

"William is being… _taken care of_…" he replied through chuckles.

"Ok… Well, I'll be going, then…" Jenny replied slowly, never taking her eyes off the maniacal man now laughing hysterically in front of her. She didn't know whether William had made it home to his family, but she could guess, and recognised that as sad. She would probably have cried if she wasn't so emotionally numb.

Without another word, she glanced down and brushed her thumb against the red button on the TD. She was tired, achy and incredibly worn down thanks to this whole experience, but she couldn't give up. She was ashamed that she had given up back in the last task before she had thought through every option, and she vowed never to do it again. With that in mind, she took a deep breath and hit the button.

_**A/N: As promised, a Doctor/Pond chapter will be coming your way next. **_

_**R&R? :)**_


	16. Chapter 16

_**A/N: I know it's been too long since the last chapter, and I can only apologise. My only reasonable excuse is that it's exam season. I've finished my exams now, though, so hopefully I can upload more often :)**_

"_Rorrrrrryyyyyyyy!"_

The Lone Centurion jerked awake, and was momentarily disorientated to find himself in darkness, before he remembered he was in his room. He swung his legs around to hang over the edge of the bed, leaning quickly over to switch the bedside lamp on, before reaching for his sword which rested beside the bedside cabinet. Someone (or something) had definitely woken him up…

"RORY!"

That was Amy's voice! Rory sprang to his feet, a sudden fear for his wife clutching at his chest, and, bringing the sword with him, he sprinted to the door and out onto the dark landing- tripping over his feet more than once in an attempt to get to Amy as quickly as he could.

"Amy?" He burst into River's room and brought his sword up to point ahead of him, poised for attack. It was only upon setting eyes on the actual situation that he reassessed his stance.

"Why the bloody hell have you brought your sword?" Amy asked hysterically from the floor, where she knelt over the Doctor's twitching body.

"I thought…" Rory trailed off when he spotted a milky white froth spewing from the Doctor's slack mouth. "Never mind." He dropped the sword in the doorway and quickly crouched on the other side of the Doctor's body. "What happened? Why is he on the floor?"

"He was fine- he was sleeping- but, I don't know; he must have woken up or started seeing things again or something because he sprang up and started muttering things to himself that I couldn't understand. He tried to get up off the bed, but he just collapsed, Rory- like a rag doll," Amy recounted quickly, tears shining in her red, puffy eyes again.

"And now he's frothing at the mouth," Rory sighed, scrubbing a hand across his tired features.

"What do we do?"

The Centurion paused to think, before, "We need to roll him onto his side to get the liquid out of his airwaves. He could choke otherwise."

With a quick nod of understanding, Amy reached out and helped Rory to roll the Doctor onto his left side. The ill man still twitched and gagged, but the froth and liquid could now, at least, escape his mouth, even if it dripped onto the carpet underneath. With a grimace, Rory dipped a couple of fingers into the Doctor's mouth- intent on clearing the pale man's mouth of any excessive liquid and ensuring he hadn't swallowed his tongue in the process. The Time Lord coughed involuntarily, and spittle flew everywhere, but, as Rory withdrew his- now- gunk covered fingers, his breathing became less laboured.

"Alright," Rory began, breathing heavier than usual as he wiped his fingers on his t-shirt. "There can't be much more in there; he's not drank enough to keep going the way he has been. Once the frothing stops we can get him back onto the bed, and our number one priority will be making sure he doesn't dehydrate."

"Ok," Amy replied simply. She rubbed soothing circles into the Doctor's back, her eyes fixed diligently on the floor.

They sat in an uncomfortable silence for a few moments, both pairs of eyes moving between watching the Doctor and staring at the floor. Finally, with another sigh, Rory looked up at his wife. "Why don't you go and have another lie down? You look exhausted. Go on- I can watch him for a bit."

Amy paused her rubbing of the Doctor's back for a moment, obviously thinking over what Rory had said, before, still not looking at her husband, she nodded. She didn't have the strength even to argue with him anymore. Pulling her in for a quick hug, Rory pressed a kiss to the top of her fiery head, then leaned back and let her get to her feet.

"Wake me in a couple of hours, or when you get tired again?" she asked softly, pausing by the door.

"Of course," Rory promised. Amy nodded, and then left the room. "Sleep tight."

Rory heard the door close as he turned back to watch the Doctor. The majority of froth, bile, and spittle seemed to have cleared out of his mouth, which relieved the nurse immensely, and he reached up to tug the damp cloth that had previously been used to cool the Doctor's heated skin off the bedside cabinet beside them. He methodically wiped the remaining mess from his unconscious friend's face, and nodded in approval when nothing else leaked out of the corner of his parted lips.

"Alright mate, you're probably not going to like this, but I need to move you back onto the bed. You'll be much more comfortable on there," he explained, even though he knew the Doctor probably couldn't hear.

Taking a deep breath, he hooked his arms underneath the Doctor's still twitching body and scooped him up to carry him to the bed. The Time Lord whimpered against his chest and jerked around more heavily than before, but Rory quickly deposited him on the bed before he could drop his friend back onto the floor. That done, the nurse rearranged the Doctor's gangly limbs into a more comfortable position and plumped the pillows under his head, then sat on the side of the bed and looked down at him.

"How do I stop you from dehydrating?" he muttered, more to himself than the Doctor, who obviously couldn't answer. Rory had no medical equipment for getting liquid into his friend, and he couldn't very well just tip water down his throat- he could quite easily choke. He sat in silence for a few moments, thinking back over his medical training, before a completely inspired idea hit him. An idea, he was sure, even the Doctor would have been proud of him for thinking of.

Rory got to his feet and, with one last glance over at the Doctor to make sure he was alright, he slipped out of the room and quietly closed the door behind him. He momentarily thought about waking Amy so she could sit with the Doctor for a few minutes, but thought better of it. He was only popping down to the kitchen- even the Doctor couldn't get himself into much trouble during that time, regardless of being unconscious.

He padded down the stairs in the dark, then through the hall and into the kitchen, where he leaned over to switch the light on. Wasting no time, and constantly listening for any noise coming from upstairs, he moved across the room and over to the fridge-freezer. He pulled the freezer compartment open and rummaged through the frozen items for a few moments, before his hand came into contact with a bag of ice and he pulled it to the front of the appliance. He paused for a moment, considering taking a few cubes out and carrying them up in a bowl, but decided against it and, instead, just carried the whole bag back across the room. Pausing to switch the light back off, he jogged back up the stairs, across the landing, and into River's room. Thankfully, the Doctor was laid exactly where he'd left him, and didn't appear to have moved a single muscle.

"Right," Rory breathed, shutting the door softly behind him and striding over to the Doctor's side. "Remember how I said you weren't going to like me moving you? Well, I think you're going to like this even less…"

He placed the bag of ice on the bedside table, then sat beside the Doctor on the bed and pulled him up into a sitting position against his pillows. The unconscious man whimpered again, and his brow furrowed into a pained frown, but his breathing was certainly easier in this position. That done, Rory reached out and pulled a couple of ice cubes out of the bag, before placing them into the soiled cloth he had used to wipe the Doctor's mouth. He folded the cloth over the cubes, then, glancing at the Doctor to make sure he was still alright, he smacked the cloth against the corner of the table repeatedly- not stopping until he was sure the ice cubes were broken down into small chips. Turning back to the Doctor, he unfolded the cloth and picked out a couple of the smaller chips, before reaching out and prising the Time Lord's mouth open. He placed the chips onto the Doctor's tongue, but kept his mouth firmly open until the ice had melted- to ensure he didn't choke on the sharp chips- and then eased his mouth closed to make sure the liquid didn't seep out. It wasn't ideal, but it'd have to do for now.

He repeated his process a few more times- with the Doctor occasionally coughing and spluttering in his face- before Rory decided the Time Lord had had enough for now. He'd instruct Amy what to do when she took over, and hopefully, together, they could stop him from dehydrating in the very least.

Rory glanced at his watch after a few minutes of simply watching the steady rise and fall of the Doctor's chest, and noted that it was now half past three in the morning. That meant that, if the twenty four hour rule was to be believed, the Doctor only had around fifteen and a half hours of life left. That said, with the way his body was so quickly deteriorating, Rory didn't know how he could possibly survive for another hour, never mind fifteen.

"Your daughter's taking her time," he said softly, glancing at the Doctor's face for any signs of recognition. There were none. "I hope she's alright."

He truly meant that, as well. The idea of the Doctor dying was bad enough- he didn't want to think about the possibility that Jenny could be laid, face down, in a ditch somewhere in the universe as well. He didn't know the girl particularly well, but he would never wish harm on her. She was a good, kind person- just like the Doctor- and it would be horribly ironic if she died whilst trying to save someone else.

"I suppose all we can do is wait," he sighed, before settling down beside the Doctor to do just that- wait.

_**R&R? :)**_


	17. Chapter 17

With a sudden blast of light, Jenny found herself falling- face first- into a mound of snow. She gasped aloud as the icy cold, white powder clung to her still damp skin, chilling her immediately to the bone. Shivering involuntarily, she raised her head to survey her surroundings. Just as she had feared, there was nothing but snow as far as the eye could see, and the blizzard blowing around her only made things ten times worse.

Could this… could this possibly be the Ood planet? Had she made it back? Jenny immediately shook those thoughts from her head, categorising them as idiotic. She didn't have the cure yet- why would she be transported back to the Ood if she hadn't completed her quest? There must be thousands of planets with snow- she could have been on any one of them.

She didn't want to, but she knew she had to move. If she didn't, hypothermia would set in and she'd be dead within a couple of minutes. Somewhere amongst all this snow must be a shelter of some kind; all she had to do was find it. With that in mind, and grunting quietly, Jenny pushed herself upright and clambered to her feet. Every movement was slow and stiff thanks to her aching, protesting muscles and the thigh-high snow she had to try and wade through, but she steeled herself against the cold by pulling her damp jacket closed and hunching in on herself. Ideally, she should have gotten immediately out of her wet clothes to try and regain some sort of body heat, but there wasn't really any heat going around in her current position, so she decided against it. Taking her first, staggered steps through the mounds of snow, she reached for her hat to pull it more securely around her ears, but found that it was no longer on her head.

_Great. I must have lost it in the water during the last task and not realised,_ she thought sadly to herself. She had a lot of priceless objects and memories stored in that hat, and now it was gone.

Sighing, she began to plough through the snow. There were no buildings or any kind of natural shelters in sight, but that didn't mean there weren't any at all. If she kept walking (and didn't freeze to death in the process) she was bound to find one eventually.

* * *

><p>She staggered through the snow for, what felt like, hours. It couldn't realistically have been that long, she reminded herself, because she'd have surely frozen to death, but, glancing down at her purpley-blue hands, she realised she probably wasn't far off anyway. Her teeth chattered of their own accord- short, laboured gasps for air repeatedly cracking her already chapped, bloody lips. She now shook so badly that she had to fight to simply keep upright. Every time she fell forwards into the snow, it became harder and harder to get up again. Her resolve was quickly dwindling, and she didn't know how much longer she could go on like this; she was still the only thing- apart from the <em>damned snow<em>- as far as the eye could see (living or otherwise).

Suddenly, without warning, she felt the strength escape her legs and keeled back over into the snow. Spitting a mouthful of the powder out of her mouth, she tried to weakly rise to her feet again, but knew in her heart that she no longer had the strength. She was freezing, exhausted, starving, and, above all, out of luck.

_I'll rest here for a while, and then I'll get up later, _she thought faintly to herself. Of course, a small, rational part of her brain recognised that there was a strong possibility that lying still for too long would only exacerbate things further, but she wasn't exactly listening to that part of her mind at the moment.

Darkness was beginning to cloud her vision again, which seemed odd, as she was surrounded by white in every direction. But, with every second that passed, the white got less and less so, until, eventually, there was darkness and nothing more.

* * *

><p>With a sharp, painful gasp for air, Jenny's eyes flew open. She didn't know how long she had been unconscious, but the fact that she was still alive after lying in snow for any length of time seemed unbelievable to her.<p>

Glancing around, her brow furrowed in confusion. When she had fallen unconscious she had been in a simple mound of snow, but now she appeared to be in some kind of huge laboratory made of ice. _How had she gotten there? _She moved as if to sit up and look around properly, but her hands caught on something and she fell back on what she realised was some kind of examination table- also made of ice. Glancing down to her hands, she noted that they were tightly bound by leather restraints- the ends of which sunk so far into the ice table that she had no hope of pulling herself free without first hacking her hands off.

"H-hello?" she managed to croak out, tilting her head as far either way as she could. There was nobody in sight. "Hello?" she tried again, stronger this time. Somebody had to have moved her, and she doubted they'd stray too far from the only shelter for- assumedly- miles and miles around.

When nobody replied to her, she gave up and lay back against the ice. Someone was bound to come along eventually, and at least this way she could regain some of her strength. Her wet clothes had been removed and replaced with a thick, woollen, hooded one piece suit, so at least she was warm and dry. As far as she could tell, she wasn't too badly hurt, although it was difficult to tell without being able to see the vast majority of her skin. Her body ached, but it wasn't the same sort of stabbing pain she had felt before so, with any luck, her body was beginning to repair itself.

Suddenly, there came a scuffling sound somewhere to her left, and when she turned her head she spotted a silhouette moving about in the shadows just out of her vision.

"Hey!" she cried, struggling against her restraints to sit up again. "Hey, can you tell me where I am? Please? I don't want any trouble- if you'll just let me go, I'll be on my way-"

She paused, mid-sentence, as the figure stepped into the light. The creature was as large and shaggy as a bear, but its face was more like that of a cat. No, a _lion. _It stood on its hind legs, and its arms looked just like that- arms- rather than an extra pair of legs.

"Oh, hi! Wow, look at you, all furry and…" Jenny found that she was at a loss of what to say. "Erm… can you speak?"

"The child should be quiet," came the creature's deep, guttural reply. It never looked directly at Jenny- just moved around the space, tidying and arranging utensils and all manner of objects into some kind of order.

"Is that a 'be quiet because you're annoying me' or 'be quiet because, if you don't, something terrible will happen to us'?" Jenny asked, following the creature's movements with her head as best she could.

"The child should be quiet," the creature repeated, still refusing to look at her.

"Brilliant. People who speak in the third person are my favourite…" Jenny muttered sarcastically to herself, before resting her head back against the ice table. The creature obviously meant her no harm, so she didn't feel the need to keep watching it.

Her mind drifted back to her restrained hands. If this creature meant her no harm, then why was she restrained? Did it think _she_ was going to harm _it_? That was preposterous- she was less than half its size! What could she have possibly done to it, especially unconscious, as it had found her?

"Hey, think you could let me go? Only, y'know, I have places to be, things to do…" she tried again, glancing back up at the creature.

"The child should lie still and be quiet."

Jenny growled in frustration, and let a sigh escape her lips. She was preparing to launch into a rant, when a metallic whirring caught her attention. The noise got louder and louder, until three glowing, blue dots came into her vision out of the shadows to her left.

"_THE CHILD WITH DNA MATCHING THAT OF THE DOCTOR HAS REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS. SHE WILL NOT UNDERMINE OUR PLANS; SHE WILL BE EXTERMINATED."_

The cold weather wasn't the reason for Jenny's blood turning suddenly ice cold. The blue dots became eyestalks, swiftly followed by the rest of the Dalek form as they moved into the light.

_Shit. _

_**R&R? :)**_


	18. Chapter 18

_**A/N: It's been a long time since I last updated- too long- and it makes me feel awful because I'm still getting so much support for this :( The truth is that I dug myself into a bit of a hole at the end of the last chapter, and it's taken me weeks and weeks to figure out how to get myself out of it. I know where I want everything to end up- I just don't know how to get it there sometimes. As is life, though, I suppose :') **_

_**Seriously, though, over fifty reviews! Hugs and cookies for all of you :)**_

"What plans are these, then?" Jenny couldn't help but ask as the Daleks circled around her and moved towards some machinery across the room. If she could keep them talking, maybe she'd be able to find a way out of her restraints and, more importantly, this whole sticky situation.

"_PROJECT STATUS: FOURTY TWO PER CENT," _one of the Daleks commented, obviously completely ignoring everything she had just said. Hey- it was better than being exterminated, at any rate.

With the Daleks' backs to her, Jenny was free to rattle her restraints around in the blind hope that they might magically fall apart. She had no luck- of course- but the ice beneath her hands slowly got more and more slippery the more pressure she applied.

The friction was causing it to melt!

Barely able to conceal her excitement, she glanced back over at the Daleks- they were still engrossed in whatever was on the monitors of the machines across the room- before beginning to discreetly rub her wrists and clenched fists against the table beneath her. Sure enough, the straps holding her in place were slowly coming loose. 

She didn't know how long she worked at her bindings, but her hands were beginning to feel numb and, as she sneaked a glance down, realised the ice was red with her blood. Cursing softly to herself, she gave one final tug and felt her hands slip loose of the restraints. She could barely breathe with excitement.

Her body felt stiff and achy as she pulled herself quickly into a sitting position in order to undo the clasps holding the restraints around her legs, whilst throwing occasional glances over at the Daleks and- she realised- the bear lion creature that stood beside them. _Chewie, _she christened offhandedly, whilst working the last of the clasps off her legs.

Once she was free- and sure that none of her company was aware of this- Jenny slipped quickly off the ice table and dropped to the floor behind it, thinking furiously about her next move. Her whole existence screamed with exhaustion, and part of her thought-briefly- about laying back down and just taking whatever the Daleks wanted to dish out. That idea was gone in the blinking of an eye as she squinted into the darkness billowing from the edges of the room, and realised there was a gap in the ice that acted as an arch-like doorway into another part of the snowy fortress.

Taking a deep breath, she risked one last glance over at the Daleks over the top of the ice table. The monsters were still deeply engrossed in whatever it was they were doing, but she realised- freezing in place- that Chewie was staring silently at her, head tilted inquisitively to the side. Their eyes locked for the briefest of moments, and then Jenny was crawling quickly across the floor towards the door. The Daleks were going to find out she was missing sooner or later, so it didn't really matter if Chewie told them, but she wanted to get as far away as possible before that time came. Her best chance of survival at this point was trying to get a head start, because there was simply no way she would come away from a head on battle with three Daleks alive.

She was on her feet as soon as she hit the shadows, and then- treading carefully to make sure she didn't go flying across the slippery floor- bolted through the arch and quickly surveyed her surroundings. An ice corridor spread out in front of her, with more arch-doors either side of her, and another one straight ahead. She peered into the nearest room and did a double take. Mounted on the back wall was a huge, metal, circular structure that she recognised-with a prickle of fear- from her time with the Universal Army.

The Daleks had a machine that could create black holes.

What was worse- they seemed to have wired the thing up to a small, metal podium in the centre of the room. No, actually, it was wired up to the thing resting on the podium, and, with a confused jolt, Jenny realised that the object belonged to her. Moving cautiously, she drew up beside the podium and examined the work. The little piece of metal she had been given as her 'gift' at the end of the last leg of her journey had been intrinsically wired into the black hole creator- which, now she was closer, Jenny realised was humming with charged energy. There was also another set of wires being fed from the machine around the edge of the room and out into the corridor, and she could only assume that those linked with the machines the Daleks were now fawning over.

What was so important about the piece of metal she had been given? She felt like she was missing something- something important- but couldn't for the life of her figure out what, and so, with a small shrug to herself and a raised eyebrow, she reached out and tugged the metal out of its wired restraints.

Big mistake.

"_POWER FAILING. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF-" _She had to supress the strangest urge to choke out a laugh as she heard, what could only be, the sound of a Dalek pausing in shock from the other room, before, "_THE TIME LORD HAS ESCAPED. SHE IS A THREAT TO THE KEY OF TIME, AND BOTH ARE NEEDED AS A SOURCE OF POWER. FIND HER!"_

And there it was- their plan. She had no idea what a 'Key of Time' was, but assumed it was the little piece of metal now gripped firmly in her hand. Both it- and she, apparently- were going to be used as a power source to get the black hole machine to work. For what, she had no idea, but she damned sure wasn't going to stick around to find out. And, just like that, Jenny was in motion again- flying across the room and back out into the corridor.

"_EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE!"_

She didn't stop to look back as lasers began firing from somewhere behind her, leaving sizzling, melting craters in the walls, ceiling and floor where they hit. All she could do was keep running- occasionally glancing into other, empty rooms as she passed- until she came to the end of the corridor and ducked through the archway there.

Out of breath, she took half a second to make sense of her surroundings, before, realising she was in some sort of alien lab, she took off running again. The slide of rubber on ice alerted her to the fact that the Daleks had entered the room behind her, but still Jenny didn't stop. She ducked and dived around tables and control centres, all the time mere inches away from being hit by one of the Daleks' lasers.

"_YOU CANNOT ESCAPE, TIME LORD. YOUR ATTEMPTS ARE FUTILE; WE WILL BE YOUR END."_

"I'm going to have to politely decline your offer, guys," Jenny yelled through gritted teeth. "'Death by Daleks' is not on my list of preferred ways to die. Sorry!"

She dived over a set of control panels- heading for a metal door set into the ice across the room that she had just noticed- but, in doing so, her foot clipped a series of liquid chemicals resting atop the panels, and they went flying all over the metal- narrowly missing Jenny herself as she barely made it over the other side and to her feet again.

As soon as the liquids hit the dials and buttons, sparks and smoke exploded from the machine, and a terrifyingly loud, blaring alarm rang out through the entire room. Jenny paused.

"_Warning: controls compromised. Self-destruct activated in thirty seconds. Twenty nine, twenty eight…"_

"Oh, bugger…" Jenny muttered, genuinely surprised. She grimaced as the countdown continued, but took off again in the blind hope of getting as far away from the epicentre of an explosion she seemed to have just activated. Again.

"_DANGER, DANGER."_

The Daleks were squawking behind her again, and, had she not known better, she would have said she heard _fear _in their voices.

"_THE TIME LORD HAS DOOMED US ALL. EXTERMINATE!"_

The lasers were back again, and in full force. Actually a pretty stupid idea, as well, because they'd probably end up doing more damage to the controls than Jenny had managed to do already. Daleks really were _stupid _sometimes.

Jenny hurdled the last obstacle in her way- which turned out to be a chair, and, seriously, with the Daleks running this place, who was going to sit on _that?- _and was at the door faster than she ever thought she had run before. Glancing around, she spotted an emergency release button and slammed her fist into it without even a thought. The door slid open, and she was immediately hit with a face full of icy wind as she realised she was at the _exterior _door.

"_Self-destruct in fifteen, fourteen…_"

She gave a triumphant cry, and made as if to sprint out into the snow, when something snagged her foot and she tripped. Panicked, she rolled quickly, kicking out at whatever was gripping her, and realised Chewie must have entered the room at some point and dived for her, because the creature was currently clutching her leg and roaring in a terrifying fashion.

But there was _fear _in his eyes.

And then it clicked.

"I can save you, too!" Jenny cried desperately, reaching out to pry the creature away from her leg. "Let me go, and we can both escape! We can both live!"

Thank whatever god was out there, Chewie seemed to understand. He let go of Jenny, and she sprang to her feet, reaching out to pull the creature to its feet, too, when;

"_Emergency lockdown initiated. Self-destruct in ten…"_

And the door immediately slid closed between them- Jenny stood out in the snow, and Chewie _locked inside. _

"NO!" Jenny screamed, flying forwards to hammer on the door, and felt the resounding rumble of Chewie doing the same from the other side. "Hit the emergency release! Open the door!"

She continued to scream for another few seconds, but knew- in her heart- that it was more time than she had. She was still well within the blast radius; her only chance of survival was to run, and get as far away as possible in the small amount of time she had left. She couldn't do anything for Chewie from the outside- didn't even know if he understood properly what she was saying- and that thought set a chill about her bones that had nothing to do with the cold air and snow around her.

Reluctantly, she began to run.


End file.
